Alone is the hardest place to be.
Have you ever experienced that feeling of watching everyone around you only to realize that you are in a room full of people, and yet you’re alone? You look around at your circumstances and you have every reason to feel happy and motivated, but you feel the opposite.
The worst part about being alone is that it’s always a mindset and never a circumstance. This meaning, that “alone” feeling is so painful because it’s never a tangible reality. Instead it is an intangible mental construct that eats away at all things good in your life. It could be argued, that alone is simply the result of a purposeless life.
We can all agree that we grew up believing that to be alone was to be void of people around you. To humanity, alone is to have no one. Perhaps, however, we are defining alone wrong. Think about it, does a room full of meaningless people and things ever make you feel surrounded. Does it ever settle that voice in your head telling you that there is nothing and no one here for you? If the answer to this question is “no”, then we must raise the question of what makes us feel surrounded? What makes us feel seen and heard? How do we fill that lonely mindset that so many of us have?
The answer is simple, understand that people cannot get rid of the alone feeling you have. Some of us fight our whole lives to feel full, loved and surrounded. We acquire as many friends as possible, join as many clubs as we can and sleep around and date whomever, however, only to realize that all the people in the world can’t quiet the lonely reality in our heart and head.
Some of the most full people are those who have nothing and no one and still understand their place and purpose in this world. It is the people that look at an empty room and still understand why their presence is necessary and valuable who never feel alone.
It should be noted, for those of you in the loneliest part of your life, that chasing people and things will never make them stay. You can do everything right and be everything they need you to be, and still, everything and everyone will leave you until you work through your internal loneliness. No one respects or wants to be around someone that is dependent on his or her presence.
Another important reality to note is that no one is going to save you from your loneliness. Nor is it their responsibility to do so. The good thing about it, however, is that once you reach a place where people aren’t the foundation of your peace, that won’t matter. The bulk of relationships are destroyed because people are pouring out of people to sustain themselves instead of pouring into people because they themselves are already fulfilled.
Imagine what the world would be if we were all content with ourselves and everyone else was just a bonus.
With that being said, use your time in college to fulfill yourself. Let your passion be what surrounds you and let the people you meet just be a bonus.
Remember, you will always be physically alone if you are not internally full.