A couple of weeks ago, I found myself wanting to go to the beach, but I didn’t do it because there was no one to go with me… and I regretted it so badly. I realize that my friends and family aren’t going to be there for me every time that I want to do something and, if I couldn’t even go to the beach on my own, how I was going to move to another country to study my Master’s degree… alone?
Most of us don’t like to do things by ourselves. We wait for someone else to go to the beach with, or the mall, and even to partake in making important decisions in our lives. But what we aren’t noticing is that the people in our lives don’t wait for us to get their things done, and that doesn’t mean that they don’t care about us, it’s just normal. Eventually, we have to keep moving on without constantly waiting for someone else to join in.
Doing things on our own can be hard, especially if we are used to having company all the time; but there is beauty in walking alone every now and then. You start to get to know yourself better and recognize what you like to do and what you don’t; you learn to enjoy the environment a bit more and begin to pay attention to the little things that you haven’t seen before.
Remember, we aren’t going to have someone beside us every day. Let’s learn to venture out alone. I’m not saying that we have to stop sharing time with our loved ones, but we must learn to detach ourselves from them and begin to enjoy the pleasure of spending a little while with ourselves, making decisions on our own.
I’ve committed to this train of thought and it has inspired me to act upon this issue; I even created a list of things to do by myself. Some of them are as simple as going to the mall, the beach, or to Old San Juan, and a couple of them are a big challenge like moving to Spain with me, myself, and I.
The important thing is that you—and me—learn to do things by yourself without waiting for someone else to join in. After all, you are the person with who you’re going to be spending the rest of your life with, so make it count.