Being Alone

By Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo

The French philosopher Blaise Pascal once said, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”  Let’s examine what happens when man is left alone by himself, especially these days.  First attempt to avoid being alone is to get one’s smartphone and go to social media.  But once there in social media you find out that a person has not messaged you back and you feel forgotten or neglected.  Or most of the people there have better life than you, and you feel left out in the “happiness bandwagon” or someone message you back but the message seems to have many interpretations and you focus on the negative way of reading it.  What was supposed to be a relief from problems becomes another problem.

Therefore, the solution is to avoid social media, avoid interacting with the world, and be alone.  No distraction, no stimulation, and you have peace of mind.  But being alone will lead you to facing another monster: your negative default thoughts.  First your mind will tell you that you can’t afford the time to be alone because you have many things to do.  Or the mind becomes like an annoying roommate that makes you feel guilty of your past wrongdoings or makes you feel worthless.  Aside from that it wants you to worry or stress about the future, and beat yourself up over the past. It becomes an incessant troublemaker that if it does not get a dose of stimulation, it lashes out at you.    But the problem of stimulating the mind is feeding it with the things of this world.  And as Eckhart Tolle says, “Nothing out there will ever satisfy you, except temporarily or superficially.  But you may need to experience this kind of disillusionments to realize this truth.”

So how do you go out of this vicious cycle of trying to be alone to avoid distractions but once alone the mind stresses you out with self-guilt?  It’s a “damn if you do and damn if you don’t” dilemma.  The problem with many people when being alone is monologue.  The problems of our life especially the mind provoking us with guilt will not be saved within us, but outside of us.  The solution is dialogue not monologue.  A dialogue with someone while you are alone.  Christians call it prayer.  Christians especially saints are not afraid of being alone but welcome it  because they are not actually alone, but they are with their intimate friend, no other than their Maker.  The solution to the problems of life does not come from us but outside of us, in the person of Jesus.  That’s why He is a savior.  We need a savior because we can’t solve life’s difficulties on our own.  Many people interpret Christ as a savior of our sins but don’t realize that our miseries are precisely caused by our sins.  If you let Christ remove your sins, your miseries will be removed too.  That’s basically what it is meant to be saved.  Saved from our sins that is the root cause of our miseries.  That’s why Christ started off his ministry exclaiming, “Repent and believe!” (Mark 1:15) “Repent” meaning get rid of your sins, by being sorry for them and then “believe” which means trust me, have faith in me or live a life with a relationship with me.  And that relationship will only grow through communication or dialogue or what is otherwise known as prayer, being alone with God.