Ever wondered what truly defines you? Beyond titles and possessions, it's just 'You'. Quietly guiding choices, influencing paths, even bringing you to read this. This 'You' craves simplicity, honesty...
Let's just pause for a moment. Look around you. You're probably holding your phone or laptop, maybe lying down on the couch or sitting up on the sofa, reading this. But don't just focus on these words. Listen to the sounds around you, take in the sights, notice what the people in your house are doing. Forget what you need to do next, forget what's happened so far, forget what you know and what you want to know, forget love, care, respect, pride, wealth, relationships. Forget your child's name, your home address, your nationality, your religion, and experience a moment of loneliness. Detach yourself from every ounce of 'self' identity. Now just sit and look! What's happening around you? What are you doing in it? Stay still, breathe slowly, and just watch the world for a moment, without any pre-context thoughts in your head.
If you pause for a moment, you'll notice something strange. If you strip away everything materialistic and emotional from your life, you're left with just a body, a soul, and an almost empty mind. This feeling might seem like loneliness at first, but it goes deeper.
Loneliness becomes a mirror. Society is the deception... you must do something. Why? Because the moment you are alone your identity melts. The dopamine system plays its role here too -- it increases happiness when rising from lower levels but triggers negative emotions when dropping.
Meditation stabilizes dopamine flow, enabling better analysis and thinking. But most people distract themselves with noise to avoid confronting isolation.
All life pursuits -- careers, relationships, possessions -- stem from self-created identity. Yet beneath everything lies the essential "You," which craves survival, honesty, simplicity, and joy while avoiding recognition of its fundamental solitude.
People structure entire lives to escape loneliness rather than accept it fundamentally. The noise we surround ourselves with, the relationships we pursue, the goals we set -- all of it, at some level, is the self trying not to sit alone with itself long enough to notice what it actually is without all the decoration.
And maybe that's not a problem to solve. Maybe it's just the starting point for everything else.