I am writing this from a quiet room, lying down, just listening to music. We are so busy, all of us. We pack our minds with noise and negativity from the moment we wake up until the moment we finally pass out. I have not watched the news in about two years. Instead, I have been spending a lot of time alone, and it has changed me.
Growth Happens in the Quiet
Here is what I have found. I am never really satisfied unless I have grown a little, learned something new, or rediscovered something I already knew but had forgotten. And that growth almost always happens in the same place. Solitude. That is where our minds and hearts actually change. Not in the noise. Not in the feed. In the quiet, where there is finally nothing left to distract you from yourself.
So plan for some time to be alone. Turn the TV off. Listen to your own heartbeat for a minute. Feel the quiet promptings of Providence that you can never hear over the static of a busy life. The signal was always there. You just kept the volume on everything else cranked too high to catch it.
Solitude Is Not Isolation
Now, I am not telling you to isolate. We need people, and constant isolation is its own kind of trap, a different problem dressed up as peace. But when you can be alone, or when you need to be, it is something to embrace rather than fear. In solitude we finally get honest. We start to recognize our real needs, and we notice what is not working, which is the first step to actually changing it. You cannot fix what you have never gotten quiet enough to see.
So let us do this together. Choose a block of time to be completely by yourself, and just see what surfaces, in silence or with music that builds you up. I would bet you could even make a friend in there. Yourself. But you have to be listening and paying attention to do it. That is what friends do. They show up, and they actually listen.