Science, Art, Litt, Science based Art & Science Communication

There isn't a thing called loneliness!

Q: How does one deal with living alone and having no one to come home to?

Krishna: This perception itself is culturally and emotionally conditioned.

Let me show you a different perception.

There isn’t a thing called loneliness!

The perception really depends on the personality of the ‘lonely being’.

There are people who enjoy loneliness and make use of it in positive and creative ways and there are people who wail in self pity. I belong to the first category and have absolutely no complaints about my solitude. Who says loneliness is boring? It is fun and highly productive. I enjoy every moment of it. It strengthened my mind, made me very independent, highly confident and creative and is the reason why I succeeded so much in life (2).

Everything that had been said before about single individuals is wrong according to recent research. (3).There are so many false beliefs out there about single people and single life. And those false beliefs are "sometimes presented as being based on research”.

“In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.” - Rollo May

I want to be in a very quiet place. Don't like noises and getting disturbed. My thought process needs constant inputs and outputs only from my inner self and requires complete silence from outside. If somebody or something tries to distract me I get annoyed because my thought processes get interrupted and it takes some time for them to get back on track again. Yes, when I am thinking I have to concentrate completely on my work. Very often I prefer to be left alone. I don't favour frequent social interactions. I want to be away from everybody around! Is something wrong with me?

'No, not at all', says science! 'You are a perfect person for creativity - both scientific as well as artistic'! say research results published in the journal Neuropsychologia. [Darya L. Zabelina et al, Creativity and sensory gating indexed by the P50: Selective versus ...]

Creativity flourishes in solitude. With quiet, you can hear your thoughts, you can reach deep within yourself, you can focus. You can think creatively and critically.

Divergent thinking is a thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions to a single problem. Convergent thinking uses a limited, rule-based, predetermined route. Even if you follow rules like in science, you can get creative with a vast knowledge base and different ways of using those rules and knowledge. There is no limit to divergent thinking.

Behavioral studies have found that more creative people may have leaky sensory filters. That means the involuntary neurological process that ordinarily filters out irrelevant stimuli are not as fully engaged.

For creative minds each and every thing that comes their way is important and should be processed in equal ways and all points should be noted with highest priority.

If this kind of hyper-alert condition sounds familiar, you are highly creative! Mozart, Kafka, Darwin, Chekhov, Tesla, and Proust were reported to avoid distractions while working because they were easily distracted. If noise derails your thought, the problem might be that you may have a highly creative brain that's less able to filter out seemingly unimportant events (1).

According to Tesla: “The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone—that is the secret of invention: be alone, that is when ideas are born.”

Goethe: “One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.”

Picasso: “Without great solitude no serious work is possible."

Carl Sandburg: “One of the greatest necessities is to discover creative solitude.”

Thomas Mann: “Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous — to poetry.”

“Creativity is essentially a lonely art. An even lonelier struggle. To some a blessing. To others a curse. It is in reality the ability to reach inside yourself and drag forth from your very soul an idea.”~Lou Dorfsman

So almost all creative people either in science or art prefer solitude and agree with other creative people.

And I am alright. No need to worry! How comforting!

Okay, now let me answer your question in the way you wanted.

I am not alone! I have millions and millions of micro-organisms living with me! I have my plants, birds, and several other creatures in and around my home.

No one to come home to? That can never happen to me!

I have some good friends, both online and offline. I have some relatives too. But I meet them very rarely because I don’t find time. My time is completely occupied by my work. I don’t get time sometimes to even cook and eat! I don’t get time to sleep.

I am a polymath and work in several fields ( including science, art and literature). I try to help others and my spare time, if I get it at all, is consumed by charity work.

Sometimes I play with children around. I love them and can’t say ‘no’ to them if they want to play with me.

So I am not alone in the first place , and I am very happy being alone even if some other perceptions are taken into account.

Solitude increases my creativity, in all the fields I work in. I can do my work very efficiently because of it.

I see the universe as a single unit. There is no difference between me and the others around. Other forms are me and me the others! How can I be separate from them and lonely then?

But I still want to be physically alone! Most of the time. Solitude is the secret of my success.

Now if you try to come out of a conditioned mind, you will see the world differently and in a very very beautiful manner.

There is no loneliness, there is only bliss all around. Enjoy it!