HOW TO BE ALONE…
A friend of this page reminded me today of this video/poem, which is so beautiful, so touching, so wise, and related to our discussion on this page yesterday. I love every single moment of this little film, and I hope you will, too.
And thank you everyone for your kindness and openness yesterday, sharing your thoughts and feelings about loneliness with each other.
I love you guys.
LG
https://bit.ly/UeHHZR
How To Be Alone
A video by fiilmaker, Andrea Dorfman, and poet/singer/songwriter, Tanya Davis. Davis wrote the beautiful poem and performed in the video which Dorfman direct…
via Elizabeth Gilbert’s Facebook Wall
LONELINESS
Dear Ones –
A friend of this page asked me the other day how I have coped with extreme loneliness in my life.
I wonder if I might open up this question to the rest of you — to perhaps help others who are struggling with this great sorrow?
In my worst and loneliest times (post-divorce, mid-depression) the only thing I ever found that helped was magical thinking.
It might have been completely delusional, but there were times in my depths of loneliness when I was able to summon up the sense of an interior companion — a friend, a guide, a teacher — someone whom I could believe was with always with me, always inside me.
I used to write letters to myself from that invisible interior friend. I carried those letters, and that friend, with me everywhere. Every day, I wrote to myself from my friend. I wrote in the most loving, compassionate voice I could summon. I leaned into this idea until I came to deeply believe in it. The Sufi poets always wrote their poems to the figure they called "THE FRIEND" — something like God, something like the soul, something like the self, something like the ideal mother, like the partner you have always dreamed of meeting.
Children know the importance of this, which is why they invent imaginary friends. I've read that people on abandoned on lifeboats often report that, weeks into their lonely journey, they felt they were joined by another person. Polar explorers report this, too — a presence, a companion.
Maybe it's delusion, but maybe it isn't. Maybe there is a presence with you…
I'm not talking about madness, or the hearing of dangerous psychotic voices. I'm talking about cultivating a sense of love and tenderness toward the self, when nobody else is there to offer it.
I've attached here an excerpt from Eat, Pray, Love — from one of the letters I wrote to myself in my loneliest moments.
It helped. It always helped.
I hope this helps you…
And if anyone else has thoughts or strategies or kindness to offer here, please do!
All love,
LG
via Elizabeth Gilbert’s Facebook Wall
JUST TWO MORE WEEKS!!!
The lovely paperback of SOAT is coming in only 14 days, dear ones!
And I'll be heading off on book tour!
Click here to see my travel schedule, and come see me!
https://ift.tt/1cl1gBN
LOVE LOVE LOVE
LG
via Elizabeth Gilbert’s Facebook Wall
I love this story a friend sent me about a very notorious 19th century woman named Lola Montez — who was born with the name "ELIZA GILBERT"!
Oh, if only we are related, how happy that would make me….
And if only Alma could have had nearly as much fun as this wild chick had!
Notorious Lola Montez kept the men in S.F. panting
www.sfgate.com
[…] her erotic exploits, political intrigues, violent temper and extraordinary beauty had made headlines throughout the world. Who became the lover of the famous virtuoso pianist Franz Liszt? Who moved on to Paris, taking the City of Light by storm and taking a swashbuckling French journalist into…
via Elizabeth Gilbert’s Facebook Wall
Dear Ones —
I have a lot of trouble sometimes forgiving myself for my mistakes and failures. I lie awake at night and review my errors, and wonder how I could have been so blind. I wish for thousands of second chances, third chances, hundredth chances, to go back and correct myself — to finally get it right. I want to un-say what I said, or speak out what I never dared to express. There are people I want to go back in time and eliminate from my destiny, and others who I want to retrieve because I lost them so foolishly. I long to take what is fixed and finished and done, and do it over — better, always better. I think, "You should have known, Liz, how could you not have known?"
I'm sure I'm the only person who does this to myself, right?
🙂
Then I remember this line from Rumi, about embracing everything (EVERY SINGLE THING) that has brought you to this place, to this divine moment:
“If God said, ‘Rumi, pay homage to everything that has helped you enter my arms,’ there would not be one experience of my life, not one thought, not one feeling, not any act, I would not bow to.”
I remember that, and I bow down in gratitude to it all.
ALL of it.
Sending you love this fine morning,
LG
via Elizabeth Gilbert’s Facebook Wall
