Everybody has a different definition of living. Everybody imagines a different thing when they think of their dream life. For some, it's having a job they love, a caring, loyal spouse, a comfortable home, and beautiful children. For some, it's having a mansion so big they don't even know what to do with all the space, 5 different gleaming sports cars in the garage, and vacations homes on white sand beaches all over the world.
But for me, it's exactly this. Travel. My dream life consists of no more possessions than I can carry on my back. It consists of sand in my sheets and showers that are never consistently cold or hot. Never being sure where I'm going to be sleeping two nights from now. Or maybe even two hours from now. It consists of meeting hilarious, inspiring, selfless, people from every corner of the earth to share all of my experiences with.
I know this is my dream life because sometimes I am so overwhelmed with love for everything that I almost choke. I just want to run around and hug every living thing and squeeze them until our hearts explode. I want to climb to the tallest peak and scream to the entire world that I am so incredibly, hopelessly in love with every single cell of it.
Everybody has a different idea of living. And thank God for that. How boring the world would be if we were all the same. Ask yourself what your dream life is, and go get it. Live it. For all any of us know, this is all we get. So love the shit out of your life!
Sunday, 27 July 2014
Thursday, 17 July 2014
Loneliness vs Solitude
Alone. The word can be positive or it can be negative. It can stir within you a feeling of fear or excitement. Having been travelling on my own for four months now, I have had my fair share of alone time. For the most part, I find it empowering, exciting, easy. But there are times when I feel so alone I have to fight the urge to jump on the next plane home where I can be surrounded by people who know me and love me.
Alone. On one side we have solitude. On the other; loneliness. On one side we have the positive and on the other, the negative.
Solitude is having a meal alone and being completely content in your own company. Solitude is wandering through the streets of an unknown city and getting completely and utterly lost, but feeling nothing but exhilaration because you are responsible to no one and have absolutely nowhere to be. Solitude is staying in on a rainy day and watching 10 episodes of Orange is the New Black because you feel like it. Solitude is amazing. It's necessary. It's getting to know yourself the way another might get to know you, by simply spending time with you.
Loneliness, on the other hand, is having your heart broken and having no one to wipe your tears. Loneliness is being sick and having no one nearby who even knows you, let alone will hold your hair back while you are violently ill. Loneliness is being in a group of people who are all having fun and feeling like an outsider. Loneliness is dark. Loneliness is empty. But loneliness, too, is necessary.
See, solitude and loneliness are two sides to the same coin. You can't have one without the other. The amazing, empowering feeling you get when you are alone is only there because you realize that you have surpassed loneliness. You are content in your own company. There is no one else on earth you would rather be sharing this moment with than you. Of course we need others in our lives. When times are difficult, especially. But to know that you can always count on yourself and to be comfortable with that, that's the kind of alone I am becoming unable to live without.
Alone. On one side we have solitude. On the other; loneliness. On one side we have the positive and on the other, the negative.
Solitude is having a meal alone and being completely content in your own company. Solitude is wandering through the streets of an unknown city and getting completely and utterly lost, but feeling nothing but exhilaration because you are responsible to no one and have absolutely nowhere to be. Solitude is staying in on a rainy day and watching 10 episodes of Orange is the New Black because you feel like it. Solitude is amazing. It's necessary. It's getting to know yourself the way another might get to know you, by simply spending time with you.
Loneliness, on the other hand, is having your heart broken and having no one to wipe your tears. Loneliness is being sick and having no one nearby who even knows you, let alone will hold your hair back while you are violently ill. Loneliness is being in a group of people who are all having fun and feeling like an outsider. Loneliness is dark. Loneliness is empty. But loneliness, too, is necessary.
See, solitude and loneliness are two sides to the same coin. You can't have one without the other. The amazing, empowering feeling you get when you are alone is only there because you realize that you have surpassed loneliness. You are content in your own company. There is no one else on earth you would rather be sharing this moment with than you. Of course we need others in our lives. When times are difficult, especially. But to know that you can always count on yourself and to be comfortable with that, that's the kind of alone I am becoming unable to live without.
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