LEARN TO BE LONELY... Dear Ones — A friend of this page asked me today if I wo... | Official Website for Best Selling Author Elizabeth Gilbert

Loneliness is one of the most painful yet necessary experiences in life. People feel incomplete, empty, or even starvinginside. It is also a strong motivating force, just as food hunger is.

Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. An intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand

If you go through life tending to your authentic voice and making it your job to learn and accept as much about yourself as you can, you generally wind up being one of those older people who are happy and wise, rather than an older person who is bitter and small-minded.

Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.

You can be lonely anywhere, but there is a particular flavour to the loneliness that comes from living in a city, surrounded by millions of people.

So much of the pain of loneliness is to do with concealment, with feeling compelled to hide vulnerability, to tuck ugliness away, to cover up scars as if they are literally repulsive. But why hide? What's so shameful about wanting, about desire, about having failed to achieve satisfaction, about experiencing unhappiness? Why this need to constantl