In Quiet Solitude, I Find Joy
“To make the right choices in life, you have to get in touch with your soul. To do this, you need to experience solitude, which most people are afraid of, because in the silence you hear the truth and know the solutions.” -deepak chopra
Never in a hundred years would I ever have imagined saying those words. EVER.
I always used to be very uncomfortable in the quiet. In fact, many a time I would feel the need to fill up a space with noise and chatter, be it verbally or through songs, or with the television. So much so that when we were contemplating cutting off our cable service, I threw a hissy fit. I was the type who thrived on television, or more succinctly, the sound of the television (so much so that I would even listen through endless product reviews and campaigns, from kitchen tools, to exercise gadgets and even repeated spots on miracle creams and beauty products that highlight all sorts of claims such as 7 second eye lift reviews). There was something about the sound of the conversations on television that just made me feel not so alone.
Yes, I needed all of that to keep me feeling safe and comfortable. In whatever way, shape or form, I always needed that movements, sounds and activity going on and that would lull me to sleep and allow me to just be content.
I guess the discomfort I was drawing on from the quiet and the solitude often came from the fact that it’s very different from what I know and am familiar with. After all, being the eldest in the family and being the “ate” in all sense of the word (from family to friends to work and to everything else in between) left me with such great demands to be busy and moving all the time, and as I did that, I never really had time to ask myself what it is I wanted or needed. In that hustle bustle, I get to attend to others, I get to feel reassured that I am needed and wanted, and more so, I get to feel like I am doing things right.
Yes, all of that was just a facade I liked to keep up because it was familiar. Deep down, apparently, I am not the bright, sunshiny person I had gotten to know, but someone who is really dark and twisty (borrowing Meredith Grey’s terms) on the inside who just likes sitting in the dark doing absolutely nothing, not in the spirit of being a bum, but in purposive laziness (this I borrow from my yoga teacher 
). And without the movement, without the noise, I am left with nothing but whispers of doubt and insecurity as uncertainty creeps in. I am left with nothing to do but just be. And to just know and have faith.
But now that I am becoming more aware of this, and willing to face those inner demons, I realize that it is in that quiet solitude I find what it really means to be joyful. Slowly I am beginning to understand that things I don’t need to be acted upon immediately, or solved or stated for that matter. And being “lazy” or still (which I used to think equated to being bad, or boring, or simply useless) isn’t always a bad thing.
And you know what…because I am still and more joyful, not necessarily the outward “happiness” that I think happiness is all about, I deal with people better, giving just enough and taking what I need. In the same way, I can respond to situations with more authenticity and without the need to either babble away or clam up.
And at the end of the day, I’d like to believe that this is what makes me a better me.
