Solitude therapy

This happens to be one of the best sundays that I got to spend after such a long time. I really cant think of a more relaxing and de-stressing one in the last couple of months.

For a lot of people a holiday means to rush off to a mall, spurge on senseless shopping, rushing to movies and doing anything/ everything to keep oneself distracted. I see a lot of people making a conscious effort at disconnecting from oneself. Its such a sorry thing to do. The only time of the week when you get a chance to re-connect you choose to just let it slip and work your way in a converse direction.

Solitude makes people uneasy. It creates a deep sense of unrest. The reason being that most of us equate solitude with loneliness. Loneliness is like a closet where we keep stuffing all that makes us uncomfortable and which we do not want to confront. When we find ourselves alone all that we have kept on ignoring and denying, resurfaces. This is a classic case of "fight or flight" response, most of us without realizing and giving much thought to it, take the easy out. This is response that comes most natural to us, its "hard-wired" into our system and therefore its very rare that one puts much thought to it. The stress that the situation induces upon us is purely a cognitive one and hence there is always an easy escape from it. "Man is a cognitive miser" is one of my favorite  quotes. Most of us prefer to spend heavy on the wallet front rather than spending time in self-analysis and self-understanding.

Today I was fortunate enough to get an opportunity to spend an entire day alone. I did not do anything spectacular through the day. Woke up late, lazed an extra hour in the bed. Went through the sunday newspaper, had a fruit salad breakfast, washed clothes, cooked lunch, watched a movie, random web-surfing, went for grocery shopping, cooked chana masala for dinner and since it was sprouted it was all the more nutritious, watched one more movie and finally blogged after a real long time :)

Finally as I prepare for going to bed and getting up to the same old frenzy and madness of monday morning the thought that crosses my mind is from the movie Hitch which I watched today -

Life is not the amount of breaths you take, it's the moments that take your breath.

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