“When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person’s body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
I just love that: Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. I recently started a new writing project on solitude and what that means not just to me, but other writers around the world through the exchange of the written word. Like this blog, I have taken the project on blindly — and so anything can come of it. Two years ago, I would have obsessively thought it through to see if taking on this project was worth my time. I can hear my stern, judgmental voice, “Ya, sounds great but what will you get out of it, Stephanie?” And now I’ve learned (boy, have I learned) that the guts, the raw stuff that is so very essential to both learning and growing is obtained when you stop thinking and just do.
And so here I go, mapping solitude without a map.