Take a break from hanging out with other people.
As amazing as I hope your friends and family will be, I think you’ll find it necessary and worthwhile to take a break from hanging out with other people and spend time with yourself. It will give you time to figure out what you think and what you want to be and do and separate that from what other people think and what they want you to be and do. I have been a in a lap swimming pool completely alone exactly once. I was in Japan and I remember two things about it. One was noticing that every movement of the water was caused by me. The surface of the water was flat as glass when I first stepped in and after that the water reacted to my movements. The second thing I remember is that I was relieved of some pressures that I had never known were there. One was the pressure to swim faster than the person next to you and faster than the person who’s behind you. Even when I knew the person behind me was far behind me, I realized, only once I swam alone, that when there was someone behind me, I always felt a subtle pressure to swim fast enough to not be in their way and slow them down. And when I swam past someone in the same lane going the opposite direction, I always felt a subtle pressure to not bump into them or the lane rope next to me as I swam past them. These are all things that I never would have noticed if I had never swam alone. All of those small subtle pressures would have existed but I wouldn’t have been able to expose them and see them for what they were without swimming alone. Swimming alone in the pool in Japan was amazing. It didn’t even have lane ropes even though it was big enough to swim laps. After a while, too, I thought, “Why am I swimming laps? There are other options. Maybe I should swim in circles or dive deep or do handstands.” When you take a break from spending time with other people to spend time with yourself, you will feel differently. All of the pressures will be taken off. And you will have different thoughts. Benefit from that pressureless state and those different thoughts and take them back with you to the rest of your life.
I haven’t really thought much about that pool in Japan since I’ve been there until now. Writing is something you might enjoy doing with some of that time you spend with yourself. Writer Flannery O’Connor said, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” And Stephen King said, “I write to find out what I think.”
Foster your creativity.
Time alone can foster your creativity in expressing yourself and in solving problems in ways that spending time with other people cannot. It’s a balance between the two—I’m sure you’ll get good ideas from spending time with other people that you wouldn’t have gotten if you were always alone—but I think you will also get good ideas from spending time by yourself that you wouldn’t have gotten if you only spent time with other people.
Appreciate your time alone and your time with friends and family.
If you go camping for a week by yourself, I think you will come back with renewed sense of appreciation for your family and friends and the brightness that they add to your life. People aren’t meant to live alone. But I don’t think they’re meant to live in constant contact with their tribe either. Balancing the two will help you find yourself.
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