Stepping Outside

I do not have a goal or desired outcome other than getting myself out.  I do know that I want to comment about loneliness and isolation, something I have felt and heard others describe. I read several articles while quarantined that talk about managing the effects of stress while isolated. Many of the articles’ avenues and suggestions are for balancing time working and parenting, recreation and sedentary, many even offering breathing techniques and journaling options. I find use and validity in the specific steps and strategies offered yet I feel more interest in how I feel while wandering to, through and after the steps. My emotions seem to want to work themselves out. The process of becoming.

A part of me considers that this writing may be taken as an afront to concrete and practical steps to quell challenging emotional experience. And perhaps it is, in a way, as I am a person who more reactively leans into their own plans versus subscribing to another. I hope to expand and explore more the experiences of isolation and loneliness that undermine many of my own direction seeking. Even though I am a counselor by training, I am a homo sapien by nature and as such I have organic parts of me that react without consciousness that I am still discovering. A friend of mine, and colleague, once reminded me that “The sun and the moon move the tides. You don’t think you are moved by them too?!” I feel grateful for your honesty Leonard.

Feeling lonely as an effect of isolation. What comes first? My affect shows bah-hum-bug. To feel a part of something, which is different yet perhaps something akin to feeling apart. A part of something denotes a component of the whole. And apart lends more to some stretch of distance from, a separation. I feel lonely and apart. Apart as an effect of the lonely, and vice versa these parts interact. And not that I am not around others as I am in place with my family. This sense of apart, separated and feeling lonely seems to be connected with “what am I to do?” as that thought comes to mind.

I am used to having so many options. And now I do not. It is not that I do not have any options, but now more than most other times I feel apart from others, torn on how to involve myself. Here the challenge arises! I notice that I am wondering about what to do? What is my (and this part’s) purpose?  How do I aim myself (this part) as I am aware? As well I am noticing that my lack of interactions with others at times undermines my senses. Intentional or not that others offer, interactions perhaps I am discovering provide a sense of opportunity. A sense of opportunity without more or less imminent death. Others offer that as well, and always do. I want to continue considering others, and myself, as containing all the options available, from life to death, without judgment. I am zooming in as I step outside.