When I’m Alone

I’m the kind of person who needs a certain amount of alone time.

This is the time when I digest all my unresolved experiences, conversations, feelings, hopes, fears–both new and old–to search for some logic or wisdom or sense.

It’s where I look for patterns, make connections, put things together in new ways so I can look at them from different angles to see if there is new meaning there, if I actually understand something, or if I just think I do.

This is where I examine my life to see if I’m still headed in a direction I want to go or if my course needs correcting.

It’s where I work through my emotions and where I try to fathom the deep love I have for those three little people who call me grandma.

This is where I search for truths both personal and universal.

When I’m in this place, this state of mind, I feel a single-ness, an alone-ness, that defies logic.

I am alone in my own world, but not lonely.

I am separate, but full.

This is how I discover things about myself and the world around me.

This is where my heart touches God’s.

This is where my belief system lives and evolves.

This is where chaos retreats so quiet can recharge my soul.

I remember finding this as a child when I was weeding a garden or raking leaves with my dad or when my sister Sue and I would walk around town for hours at a time.

This has continued throughout my adulthood. I favor raking leaves over using the riding mower to chop them up and if you want to help me weed, please do it quietly or dazzle me with a meaningful, quiet conversation.

When I slow down in my alone-ness, I feel like I become one with my surroundings. (Walking down a road, you discover the turtle beginning to cross. When driving a car, you’re more apt to run it over.)

When raking, weeding, walking, or just sitting out in nature or even in my office, I feel the universe. I feel my place. I gain a perspective that goes beyond the everyday. I am able to find sense in the senseless, find a kind of peace with what’s troubling me.

I’m able to take the chaos that’s in my head and string it out in one long line so I can take it all in without getting trapped in all its twists and turns.

I am one of those people who believes, at least for me, that the unexamined life is not worth living.

The quiet, the recharging, the examining; it is what teaches me to love and to appreciate what I have.

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What do you do with your alone time?