Life-lessons From The Most Read Article On Medium
Learn to be with yourself
This article has 295,558 claps, and 1010 comments at last count. It was written by Zat Rana. He titled it ‘The Most Important Skill Nobody Taught You’.
According to the article, the most important skill nobody teaches us is how to embrace the art of solitude and be with ourselves.
“Being alone and connecting inwardly is a skill nobody ever teaches us.”
The message resonated with so many people for a reason. As it turns out, the ability to disengage from the noise around us and be with ourselves is something to be treasured.
And for me, the key highlight was:
…the less comfortable you are with solitude, the more likely it is that you won’t know yourself.
Lots of people are drifting through life without really knowing what it means to have a relationship with themselves.
We have no idea how easy it is for our ‘being’ to be drowned by the noisiness of the world. And as a result, a lot of people only know themselves through the eyes of others.
Lots of people are yet to realize how sublime it is that they exist as individuals. In this world of ours, there are always so many things going on. So much that there distract us from the awesomeness of our lives and earthly existence.
The Most Important Relationship
Without a doubt, we are social beings, and our social interactions and relationships can be pivotal to our general wellbeing. But the most important relationship we can ever nurture in life is that which we have with ourselves.
Our ability to connect with our inner self, and savor the awesomeness of our individuality and existence can make the difference in our mental health.
The desire to connect with the inner self is the reason more and more people are taking up practices like meditation, journaling, and solitude.
To best experience the sublimeness of everything around us, we would first have to connect with the sublimeness of our ‘own’ existence.
You don’t have to wait until you are rich or in a romantic relationship, or whatever. Get in touch with yourself now.
Establishing a healthy relationship with ourselves ought to be the utmost priority of every human, above every other pursuit.
We should first connect inwardly before we connect outwardly. If you’re not in touch with your inner being, you’re shortchanging yourself in your interaction with the outer world. The beauty of you comes from within.
Alone But Not Lonely
We are so disconnected from ourselves that a lot of people will fall into despair if their internet was cut off, or if their TV broke down.
Our inability to be with ourselves would mean that we may perpetually have to look outside of us for all the great emotions we want to feel like happiness, peacefulness, confidence, etc.
You cannot be with yourself because you are disconnected from the awesomeness of your existence. And because you cannot be with yourself, you end up being needy and enslave yourself to others.
We have to learn to be comfortable and content in our ‘being’ to unlock the door to emotional self-sufficiency. This is an important piece in solving the mental health puzzle.
There is a big difference between being alone and feeling alone.
Collaboration is great, engagement is great, but as much as we can, we should also develop the ability to embrace solitude, and enjoy being with our ‘self’.
The Sublime
Our days are filled with stimulations of the beautiful while we miss out on the magic of the sublime.
And though we are relentless in our pursuit of happiness, the moments that will mean the most to us at the end of the day, are those where we experienced the sublime.
It is this experience of the sublime that some people seek when they indulge in drugs and psychedelics.
The highlights of our lives will not be the number of beautiful moments in them, but how sublimely we experience them.
The best things in life are usually the little things in life. Being able to experience the ‘sublime’ in the ‘mundane’ leads to a greater appreciation of life and everything else.
Now, more than ever before, it has become increasingly difficult for people to experience the sublime, not with the array of cool innovations designed to mine our attention.
Regardless of how exciting and engaging modern innovations are, there should not stop us from experiencing the sublimeness of our ‘own’ being. Nothing is as blissful and mentally liberating as experiencing the sublimeness of our being and everything around us.
Time Flies
“The days are long, but the years are short.”
The above quote is from Gretchen Rubin’s book ‘ The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun’.
While in our constant pursuit of ‘more’, we miss out on the sublimeness of ‘now’.
Life is happening ‘now’, and we have to learn to live and soak it in.
When we live a fast-paced life, everything is a blur.
To savor our existence, we have to fill it up with moments of ‘stillness’.
Even though we live in a fast-paced world, we need to slow down our lives by incorporating spaces and stillness into it.
We should embrace ‘being’ before we seek ‘doing’, and not the other way round. Our worthiness as Humans does not come from anything we have done or will do. We are worthy because we are Human. We are worthy on the mere basis of existence.
