Read this when feeling lonely.

There is a fine line between loneliness and aloneness. The two are distinct, yet easily mistaken for each other.

You are not always lonely, but you are always alone (you can read that again). You are not always lonely because you are not always disconnected from things (not just people) around you. Loneliness is somewhat bound to come, from time to time, especially during the transitional phases of your life. You will not always be lonely; you just have to find the connectedness with someone or something else.

You are always alone because in the end your mortality is only yours. If there’s something you are not familiar with, it’s how to die, and that’s a very individual and alone thing to experience. People (and other things) will come and go, but you will always have yourself. You individualism always will remain the things you only know most about everything. Of course you could be wrong about yourself, but there’s no denying the fact that you are you. You are able to empathize with things but only from your perspective, and even when you adopt someone else’s perspective, that’s your perspective of their perspective. You see everything through your eyes, always.

At this point in your life you’ve spent enough time with yourself to realize that you are not the most interesting person to be with in the world. It is for this reason you can’t sit idle with your thoughts for five hours. It is why you feel the urge for others to confirm your fantasies. You want to experience anything other than yourself.

So why is aloneness in times of loneliness important? Because in such times you are going to be with yourself. A lot. More often than you like. Therefore you must make peace with the chaos inside of you; learn to live with yourself. The alternative is to binge on lots of stuff and anything but facing the ugly truth about yourself. You will even be scared of going outside your house because you won’t want anyone to look right through you. But loneliness can breed acceptance.

Either you see it that way, or you keep insisting that the tunnel is dark even when you have been seeing all along, however dim the light is.

It’s not that dark.

Optimism for when you are overly pessimistic.

There is seemingly more to worry about in this life than there is to cheer for. That’s because everything turns towards disaster; the moment you’re done wiping a surface clean is the very dust begins to settle on it; a solution for a problem becomes the very problem in itself. How can you not feel pessimistic when everything seems dark?

It is dark alright, but the dark is the light. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. You have made it this far through the channel, already. Question is, how have you been able to see all along? If you think about it: things could be worse. There is an explanation for all this:

This alley may be dark, but it’s not so dark.

Maybe this is the closest to optimism as you can get.

Just own it.