Cool Loneliness
From Comfortable With Uncertainty
by Pema Chodron
Cool loneliness allows us to look honestly and without aggression at our own minds. We can gradually drop our ideas of who we think we ought to be, or who we think we want to be, or who we think other people people think we ought to be. We give it up and just look directly with compassion and humor at who we are. Then loneliness is no threat and heartache, no punishment.
Cool loneliness doesn't provide any resolution or give us ground under our feet. It challenges us to step into a world of no reference point without polarizing or solidifying. This is called the middle way, which is another way of describing the path of the warrior-bodhisattva.
When you wake up in the morning and out of nowhere comes the heartache of alienation and loneliness, could you use that as a golden opportunity? Rather than persecuting yourself or feeling that something terribly wrong is happening, right there in the moment of sadness and longing, could you relax and touch the limitless space of the human heart? The next time you get the chance, experiment with this.
I like that idea a lot. So much so, that I think I've been doing it for years.
It's one of the reasons that I'm happy most of the time, even though I've been single for more than seven years now. If I had been able to do this in high school (or earlier!) things would have been oh-so-different.
by Pema Chodron
Cool loneliness allows us to look honestly and without aggression at our own minds. We can gradually drop our ideas of who we think we ought to be, or who we think we want to be, or who we think other people people think we ought to be. We give it up and just look directly with compassion and humor at who we are. Then loneliness is no threat and heartache, no punishment.
Cool loneliness doesn't provide any resolution or give us ground under our feet. It challenges us to step into a world of no reference point without polarizing or solidifying. This is called the middle way, which is another way of describing the path of the warrior-bodhisattva.
When you wake up in the morning and out of nowhere comes the heartache of alienation and loneliness, could you use that as a golden opportunity? Rather than persecuting yourself or feeling that something terribly wrong is happening, right there in the moment of sadness and longing, could you relax and touch the limitless space of the human heart? The next time you get the chance, experiment with this.
I like that idea a lot. So much so, that I think I've been doing it for years.
It's one of the reasons that I'm happy most of the time, even though I've been single for more than seven years now. If I had been able to do this in high school (or earlier!) things would have been oh-so-different.