Not too long ago, I was wondering why I was feeling a lack of love and confidence in myself. This mix of feelings bothered me and I found myself feeling insecure of the person I wanted to be. While all these feelings cluttering my mind, I began to realize that I was letting society dictate my sense of joy and completion. Throughout my life, I’ve noticed how happy couples seem to be with each other. The joy I saw in front of my eyes was the kind of happiness I began to look for until I realized happiness is not only found with a special someone. That’s when I started thinking twice about feeling a lack of love and my belief in where true happiness came from changed.

Through life, movies and social media, I’ve noticed that I was influenced to believe a happy life depends on sharing each moment with someone else. This impression of finding a sense of completion with someone else was appealing until I constantly found myself being alone and I wondered why I wasn’t content. At this point I figured that my perspective of the time was shaping how I was feeling because I didn’t have the special “someone” to share each moment with. After much thinking and learning about people who enjoy being on their own, I was open to finding happiness within myself. Once I became open to this idea, I found my joy to be more independent from people and I then found peace while being alone. This epiphany for my life has led me to find much value in being solitary and knowing that joy doesn’t come only from one person in our lives.

After getting this new perspective, when I have spent time on my own, I have discovered how enriching it is to talk with myself and really get to know the values I stand upon. Instead of being so self-conscious of myself for not having someone to share each moment with, I began gaining freedom from my thought to find joy in doing whatever I wanted to do at all times. This freedom has also given me much happiness to know that being alone doesn’t mean you are not loved. The love one feels from others can be really comforting, although the love we can always feel comes from ourselves. When we love ourselves for who we are, people love us more for the honesty we share within others and ourselves by expressing a true likeness of who we are.

These ideas have come from my experience and they have changed my perspective on the life I want to live. It took me a little bit to figure out that my joy comes from what I believe in. By saying this, I don’t believe being by myself brings me more joy than being with someone else, but I do believe I can find happiness within myself. Because each one of us has different beliefs and values, being alone may not be ideal for your preference. That is okay. We don’t all choose the same flavor of ice cream. I do have to say though: we need to be watchful of what’s around us and what we truly stand upon.

At this point in my life, I choose to spend time on my own because I enjoy doing whatever the heck I want to whenever I want to. Not that I don't enjoy spending time with people. Don’t get me wrong, I have awesome friends and family whom I love. I just developed a new way to look at my life. I now find that being solitary is not sad or something one should be ashamed of. It's just a different form of enrichment, with the potential to be just as fulfilling as companionship.