What I mean is, learning how to be by yourself and just “be.”
This can be a challenge living in a society immersed in distractions, where there are new trends, new people and new experiences constantly competing for our attention. Our generation has become so overwhelmed by external stimulation that we have lost the ability to sit there by ourselves and be alone with our thoughts.
We have this fear that if we are not constantly occupied with something to do, we will begin to feel lonely and isolated. And when we recognize these feelings starting to creep in, we gravitate to the closest form of human connection we can find - which in some cases can be our phones.
With new social media trends, we are constantly sharing every single moment of our lives online in order to feel truly connected with other people. There is nothing wrong with this. As human beings, we have a natural inclination to be social and to share our lives with others. However the extent of our need to be constantly connected, is changing the way we interact with others and how we interact with ourselves. We have developed such dependency on social media to help us feel connected and appreciated, that we are now more content talking through a screen than looking in a person’s eyes; we look for distractions rather than dealing with our emotions.
I know that I am guilty of this. 99% of the time I have my headphones plugged in, music going, my phone never far from my fingertips - deeply connected and completely distracted. This is just how society has progressed.
We put so much effort into constantly being connected in order to busy our thoughts and feel more productive and efficient. But instead we feel more isolated, depressed, and anxious. Because there is always something at the back of our minds that we have left unattended and unaddressed, nagging at us to deal with it.
We need to start building back up our ability to sit by ourselves and just be. When those feelings of loneliness and isolation start to creep in, we need to just let them hit us like a truck and embrace those emotions. Because once you are able to face them head on, you feel this sense of relief wash over you and you can feel yourself allowing happiness to come back in.
Part of becoming an adult is learning how to cope and deal with our emotions, and knowing when to close the laptops, push away the phone, and sit with our thoughts. And this is something that we need to start including in our daily lives.