Destiny versus growth: loneliness

You are never more complete than when you're laying awake in bed, cocooned in blankets and still cold, with only the sound of your own heartbeat to keep you company. People run from loneliness as though it were some kind of affliction, when it is, in fact, an opportunity. No friend, no lover, no confidante can ever compete with learning to live quietly within your own heart. Our society rightly does everything in its power to keep us from getting to that point, distracting us with an endless series of empty promises and gaudy distractions. If fewer of us felt incomplete and broken, then we wouldn't need to consume an endless series of companions in our quest to avoid facing our lonelinesses.

It's strange how we fear loneliness more than almost any other kind of suffering. In fact, people will often trade their loneliness for even greater suffering. But some of us are fortunate to be so lonely that our only choice is to deal with our loneliness, to befriend it, to understand it and hear its side of the story. Make peace with it. When we're that kind of lonely, it's glorious --- it's God sharing with us a piece of his life. Because if there is a God, he must be profoundly lonely.