Alone, Not Lonely: 5 Reasons I'd Rather Know Me Than Get To Know You

Understanding loneliness is arguably one of the most important aspects of human life. Without understanding what it is, we cannot fully appreciate the people in our lives.

Likewise, without spending time alone, we cannot fully appreciate or understand ourselves. And if we can’t do that, then we will never be content.

It’s important to take enough personal time in your life to truly get to know and understand yourself because there is literally nothing more important in life than understanding the being you are – literally nothing.

Here are five simple reasons for it:

1. I'd rather be selfish than lose my sense of self.

Complete selflessness does not exist – especially when it comes to love. Love necessarily requires a sort of dependence or need for this other individual.

No matter how much you love someone, it’s always partially, if not entirely, selfish.

Even if our actions appear selfless or could, in theory, be selfless, when we love, WE love – and whenever we are involved, we become a part of the equation.

Even if we aren’t talking about love, in life, we ourselves are the most important individuals in the world.

If there is no “us,” then – as far as we are concerned – there is no existence. Objectively, we are all equally and simultaneously, incredibly important and totally unimportant. But subjectively… well, if we don’t exist, then neither does subjectivity.

2. I'd rather open up to myself first than open up to you.

Life is one big interpretation. Everything we experience goes through the process of interpretation – no exceptions.

Our whole reality relies on the “what” we sense and feel, which is pretty crazy if you think about it.

We never directly experience the reality around us; we only experience what the reality around us makes us feel and sense – one could argue sensations are just another form of interpretation.

When we interact with other people, we are likewise interpreting their actions. We interpret the things they do and say.

People are as complicated as they are because they not only interpret what you say, but how you say it, why they think you are saying and will even go as far as to try and guess your intentions behind saying it.

We interpret everything – so it would be a good idea to better understand how we interpret the world around us.

If you can learn to see a pattern amidst the way you interpret different aspects of reality and interactions in life, then you can catch yourself when your interpretations are far removed from actual reality.

The only way to do this is to know yourself as best as possible.

3. I'd rather see the world from my point of view than anyone else's.

We experience the world and life in relation to ourselves. Again, we are egocentric beings. We believe the world to be one way – good or bad, good or evil – depending on the information we attain from being a part of it.

This is important to keep in mind because when we believe the world to be the darkest of places, it’s really only because we ourselves happened to find ourselves in a dark corner.

Nevertheless, we often stretch out our reality to encompass all of reality.

The world is not entirely a bad place, and it most certainly isn’t entirely a good place either.

When you come to understand yourself and understand your place in the world, you become almost a bystander, watching as the world moves around you.

You become grounded, anchored and capable of distinguishing patterns you were blind to for the majority of your life.

Until you find your place in the world, life thrashes you about as it pleases.

4. I'd rather make my own choices than be poisoned by other agendas.

To know yourself is to not only know your reality but to choose it. Our realities are, as I mentioned before, made up of the outside world, our interpretation of the outside world and lastly, the way we choose to react to those interpretations.

The way you choose to interpret reality – I say “choose” because when you get down to it, that’s exactly what it is, a choice – is up to you.

We can all see the bad in a good situation and good in a bad situation. It’s all up to us as to what we choose to see.

Just as importantly, once we know the reality we want to see, that we want to be a part of, that we want to adopt as our own, we need to be strong enough to remove those factors – mainly individuals – that don’t fit into the equation.

People influence your reality to the largest of extents – people and your direct environment.

If you don’t know yourself, you will never know the reality you want to be a part of, and if you don’t know what reality you want to be a part of, your reality will never feel stable.

5. I'd rather love myself than rely on other people's love.

When it comes to relationships, being in one without knowing the person you are is romantic suicide. If you don’t know yourself, then the relationship won’t work.

Likewise, if the person you are with doesn’t know him or herself, the relationship won’t work. Or at least, it makes the chances of the two of you working out exponentially less likely.

Why? It’s simple math. If you are the person you are now and are in a working relationship, then you can say the two of you are a functioning equation.

This is great if you both know yourselves relatively well – not necessarily completely, but enough to have good control of your life. But if either of you is lost, then the equation, over time, is much less likely to hold.

If A x B = Love, then 2A x B is much less likely to equal love. If either of the variables in the equation greatly changes – you or your lover are going to be less likely to make it work. Of course, the actual math is monumentally more complex, but you get the picture.

The trick is to either have two variables – two people – who aren’t going to change too much because they already know themselves very well or to have two variables that can grow together, keeping the solution equal to love.

The reason people change is that they either don’t know themselves and are looking for themselves or because they do know themselves and are simply unhappy about what they see.

The former leads to headaches and heartaches while the latter can only be resolved by impeccable focus and hard work.

Either way, life and love are no picnics.

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