“Lonely is a freedom that breaths easy and weightless and lonely is healing if you make it.”

We fear being alone. If we are not with people, we can’t resist the urge to hang out with our mobiles. It is when we are faced with this nothingness that we feel this deep urge to just run to anyone or anything. We want to run from this nothingness. But what happens if we confront it, we sit, we are alone and we are still. It is then that we can fully surrender to Christ in our realization that we are really nothing without Him.

It is when we are truly alone and in His presence, that we are transformed. We are to be transformed and not conformed. When people, their opinions and thoughts constantly surround us,we become victims of societies’ entanglement. Because, by the time you translate the thoughts in your head, some essence of them may be lost or just kept. We pray let the walls of Jerusalem be built; we pray let the walls around our hearts be built. But while we pray we must be patient and give the walls a chance because it is hard to put brick on brick when there is constant attack.

But how can we take this virtue of silence and the ability to be alone and use it to serve others? Done right, it should never be self-seeking, but a means to an end of loving more fully. Out of solitude comes compassion. Compassion is more than just pity; it is so much more; it is the tender heartedness in which we approach others with understanding and care. It is the ability to take on another’s burdens. It is the willingness to share the pain of others and like Simon of Cyrene, take the burden of the cross. But in order to get to that place, first we must be willing to go to that place of silence and solitude in order to leave behind our self and our pride. We need to really die so that we can be free to live for others

“To die to our neighbours means to stop judging them, to stop evaluating them, and thus to become free to be compassionate. Compassion can never coexist with judgment because judgment creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.”- Henri Nouwen

All this being said, I am the chief of chatterboxes and socialising, I am the queen bee in the midst of a social web and for me silence is a struggle and being alone isn’t where I thrive. God just wants you to be you. God didn’t make me a chatter box for no reason. We are created to love, and we can love through our words and our time, but I think we also must also learn to love others and ourselves in our silence. We can find the middle ground, the Holy ground, and know that there is a time and a season for everything under the sun, a time to let the harvest grow and a time to be active and pull it out of the ground.