“Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn’t have to be a walk during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but “steal” some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.”
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Albert Camus, from Notebooks, 1951-1959 |
Reblogged this on tothetable.
To learn to know and appreciate the self is an health prone attitude.
I go for walks/hikes on a daily basis (although, I am not alone, but this is no matter as the person with whom I walk/hike is the same as solitude, as we often will hours without speaking and so are each alone with our “thoughts”). There is nothing wrong with solitude, despite what some standards in Western Society may prescribe.
Alan Watts also speaks beautifully of this topic.