Converting loneliness into Solitude

This video I found at yayeverday.com (click on it if your bored, its awesome). So maybe at first you were a little perturbed by watching the first 30 seconds. Maybe your first thought was, "oh boy, another one of those creepy indie music films (because we all know hipsters make films not music videos), filled with anorexic people on acid, who are deprived of loose fitting jeans". Catching on to my sarcasm? I'm witty.

But here we see individuals dancing and eventually, dancing in their underwear. The director of this film wanted to show that a. many people dance alone b. in no less then their underwear and c. not many people look pretty dancing, especially when its slowed down or sped up. Yet somehow the end product is beautiful: an intimate loneliness that still looks fun.

Speaking of loneliness, my recent reading in Henri Nouwens, "The Only Necessary Thing" challenged my view on loneliness to be seen as a gift from God rather then a wound that seeps suffering. "It is precisely where we are most alone, most unique, most ourselves, that God is closest to us." Haven't you experienced that? It seems that is what my summer has turned into. I mostly battle with either enjoying my aloneness and the ways I'm growing in it, or cursing God for allowing it. I will say that it's experiences have made me very self-aware which in return allows for more growth and change.




Here Nouwen depicts our loneliness as something beautiful, "But the more I think about loneliness, the more I think that the wound of loneliness is like the Grand Canyon-a deep incision in the surface of our existence which has become an inexhaustible source of beauty and self-understanding". Isn't that the truth? I'm falling in love with the beauty of these words.

He continues with, "perhaps the painful awareness of loneliness is an invitation to transcend our limitations and look beyond the boundaries of our existence." Ah, a challenge.

Here is the key, "The awareness of loneliness might be a gift we must protect and guard, because our loneliness reveals to us an inner emptiness that can be destructive when misunderstood, but filled with promise for the one who can tolerate its sweet pain".