Alone but not sad … such an interesting feeling.
It is Christmas Day, 2014, and I am alone. I am alone this Christmas Day, a result of rhythms in the universe and in my life, influenced by my choices, and crafted by the journey I walk but do not fully understand.
I sit at the coast, before an altar of crashing surf, stiff cold winds, and beautiful clear blue skies. The sermon is softly spoken in this cathedral, delivered with clarity by the bite of the wind. Inner feelings speak their message that my life churns beneath my surface like the surf in front of me.
I sit alone on a day seemingly designed for family, friends, and loved ones to gather. Though there is someone close I wish was near in this moment, I don’t feel sad … simply alone … and calm … but also feeling different from the world flowing around me. These are different moments … different feelings than in the past. I see it as a reflection of the changes morphing me … changes seemingly occurring more and more under the surface of my outward facing persona.
It is not sadness I feel but simply aloneness … a sense of being alone while also feeling a sense of calmness flow through me. Calmness created by another sense that something new is being experienced and I am traveling with it on some journey into my future.
Life is awareness and change. As some say … “… loneliness describes the pain of being alone” while “… solitude describes the peace of being alone”. I sense solitude today, and that feeling reflects a change within me. I also realized a moment of earlier, greater understanding … how the holiday season and its music, cheer, flood of icons, and emergence of past memories and feelings all ended in an instant … a brief moment of intense finality as the clock crossed the boundary into today and my life began awakening this morning. Yet another metaphor for life and its impermanence … along with change … forever change. They all are the “rules of the road” on my journey, along with many others that seem to emerge along the way.
1 man's Journey 