To be alone can be a way of loving!
por Rosana Braga em STUM WORLDAtualizado em 17/07/2004 15:20:31
Translated by: Nathalia Fernandes
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We usually think the only one who loves, in fact and by right, is a person who’s with someone, dating, married or into any other relationship which necessarily includes another person. However, to be alone can also be a way of loving, to get involved with oneself, even temporarily.
All of us, at any point of our lives, have already found ourselves unavailable, even if we were not committed. It’s like saying we are waiting; and to wait can be a divine exercise, which includes patience, conscience and, most important, self-companion!
Then, one loves only oneself, while waiting to be ready. One loves oneself just for a period of review, fixing, self-reformulation. One loves oneself just to rescue inside oneself lost, old, forgotten values, to believe again in something that was lost due to a deception, to reformulate happiness, guts for living, desire of sharing.
Because to start a relationship just after finishing another to escape from this lonely love, from oneself to one alone, is what many people do... It is what all of us, probably, have already done once. Anyway, if at any moment we decide to look at ourselves with caring and respect, we’ll certainly find out that nobody can heal a wound that is ours. And even to get someone’s help in this hard convalescence, we need to be ready, connected with what is more intimate in our souls. Which means, to love ourselves alone.
On the other hand, there is also someone, which stays systematically alone, closed inside one’s own fear to avoid the comeback of pain, to deny the possibility of “losing” again. And this choice, on the same way, doesn’t lead us to evolution too, doesn’t give us a precious update, so that shared love happens.
So, to be alone can be no more a handicap or incompetence to turn into expertise; you may not be committed to the other – may it be for a personal decision or under certain circumstances -, to be better, more consistent, more attractive and conscious of the love you want to share, so that when the other comes you can host him/her as well as you can.
I believe that it is more than time to stop imposing a direct relation between “being together with someone and happy” and “being alone and abandoned”. I mean, to be together with someone does not always mean to be happy, the same way that to be alone may not be a synonym of abandon. The reference is internal and personal. The center is the heart of each person, and, exactly for this, the decision of staying or going, of closing or opening yourself must be based on the perception you have of yourself, on the love that knows of itself, that recognizes its moment, and which chooses, despite of the social pressure, if it will be shared or if it will be self-directed temporarily.
I feel it is worth to explain that I am not defending “no-love”, because you know – I don’t believe it. People that insist to justify their “loneliness” in the name of the no-need of other are, in my opinion, trying to cover an unconscious, latent, obvious and much more visible need than they think. All of us need the other, not because we are not enough to ourselves, but because it is in the act of sharing lives that we become more consistent, happier, more human.
When I defend lonely love – see! – I didn’t ignore talking about love. I talk about the first love, the essential, the self-love. And, most of all, I talk about a time and not about a definite decision, as restraining beliefs that do not take us anywhere. Anyway, I still stand up, then, to shared love, with the other, even if it is only after a time of self-love!
