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When You Find Yourself Totally Alone

Almost everyone finds themselves feeling totally alone at some time in their life. You will. Find out now what to do when it happens. Find Bill Allin at http://billallin.com
Views: 1.385 Created 09/15/2010

When You Find Yourself Totally Alone

- Ancient Zen saying


Virtually no one wants to find themselves alone in the world. But it happens. It happens to almost every one of us at some time or another in our lives. In our modern world where more people are alive than at any other time in human history, more of us feel totally alone. What's worse, no one is prepared for it. We may be surrounded by people, even family, yet feel alone. As if you are a shadow passing by other living creatures who don't know you are there.

You may not know anyone who feels totally alone today.



I'm not going to tell you that your aloneness (or anyone else's) was your own fault. Because it wasn't. Nor am I prepared to let you put the blame on someone else. Because they likely weren't at fault either. And because they no longer matter to you.

When you are alone in the world, the people of your past matter little. Even family members and loved ones seem unimportant. That's alienation, or some call it dissociation.

What matters to a person who feels alone is the people of their future. If it's you, you need a new future, not a repeat of your past. That means you need to learn how to create a new and healthy future. Often that means having to let go of the past, of the people, though not the memories. Much as you wish it to be different, you can't get people you know or knew to care more than they do. They knew the old you, got used to the old you, and you need to create a new you.




False friends always want something from you or they drop you. Real friends--the ones you want to have--need something from you, but it's not much. They want you to care about them. In exchange, they will care about you. To make a real friend you have to care about someone beyond yourself. The life of that friend must be more important than what you care about the cashier in the supermarket or the meter reader who checks your power consumption for the utility.



The hardest lesson many of us have to learn about making friends and cementing relationships is that most people aren't worth trying to make into friends. For you. They may be suitable friends for others, but something doesn't click with you and you likely won't ever be able to make it happen. To be a friend to you, a person must invest emotional energy in you. That will often happen only after you have made the same investment in them. But, like sticking coins in a slot machine, not everyone you invest emotional energy in will become a true friend.


We're a social species. When we find ourselves totally alone--or feeling alone, no matter how many others are around us--because no one cares, we feel alienated from the rest of the world. Aloneness is a feeling more than a physical reality. The feeling is real. Many times when someone feels totally alone it's because they have realized that no one cares about them the way they would like someone to care. In a highly social world, no one seeks them out for the pleasure of their company.

Despite our need for social experiences and social relationships, we also need some time to ourselves. Without that time to ourselves, time when we can do what we want and enjoy our own company, we can't be independent people. We can only be part of a collective of two or more people if we can't do things on our own and enjoy both the doing together and the aloneness. People who depend on other close friends or spouses so much they spend all their time together suffer most when the other is taken away, such as by death.

Death is real. We need to consider death. The death of a loved one or friend as well as our own. To survive the death of a close friend or mate, we need to have some measure of independence we can resort to after a tragedy. As we find ourselves alone, we need to have an independent life we can expand rather than no life other than with the one who departed. What happens to the "two who became one" when one dies? We need both the social part of relationships as well as knowledge that we can survive on our own. If we can survive our aloneness, we can build a new "together" with someone else.

Maybe the biggest question you would have about making a new friend or finding a new mate or spouse is whether or not you can trust that person. Ask yourself first, can you be trusted? How totally trustworthy are you? You can't and shouldn't expect a friend or mate to be more trustworthy than you. In one sense, you need to exude trustworthiness to make a friend because a potential new friend will look for that.

You will also need to need to feel you are contributing about 85 percent to the relationship in comparison to the other person's 15 percent. Can you feel comfortable with that? In most relationships that work well, especially with wives and husbands, each feels they contribute about 85 percent to the relationship and can be satisfied with that. It's not true though because neither one realizes how much the other contributes to the relationship. We only know fully what we contribute. Don't be shocked if you seem to be giving more to a good friend than you receive. That's human nature, the way it works.






No matter what kind of relationship you want to begin, you must first decide what kind of person would satisfy your need. Not everyone will fit your need and you must understand that before you begin anything. Most people aren't worth your time and emotional investment. The ones who are don't wear signs advertising the fact on their chests.


Talking about yourself only works so far. In advertising, the advertiser needs to appear to be more interested in the needs of the buyer than his or her own needs. Be an asker and a listener more than a teller. The world is full of people who want to tell you about themselves but who don't want to hear about you because they don't care about you. To get their attention to start something, you need to listen first. And ask about them.

Whether you look for a new friend or a new mate, look where you expect to find such a person. Many think of joining a religious group or service club, but don't think of volunteering. When you volunteer to help a charity, for example, you meet others who are also offering themselves to help others. If finding someone who will give of themselves to help others is something you are looking for--that's a critical component of every long term relationship--then volunteering costs very little and offers many possible benefits, for everyone. Volunteering is a much overlooked place to find new friends.

To find a "best" anything is a struggle. But life is a struggle. That's the way it works. Anything that comes easy is rarely worth more than was invested to get it. Keep looking. Unlike the elusive pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, finding a friend or soulmate you can treasure will happen if you do what is needed to find the right person. Don't take you time at it, friends don't usually come knocking on your door. Get doing it.

But remember, you must be the right person for the other as much as he or she must be right for you. The "lost love" was not just a missed opportunity. It was more likely a bad fit. Look for a better fit. It will happen if you work at it.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, an easy to read book about how to avoid personal and community problems before they become problems that are impossible to solve.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

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