I find it quite incredible that we are already two weeks into the new year. Perhaps it’s just a side-effect of ageing, but the days, the days seem to whizz by at a speed that leaves us hopelessly grasping at their shadows from the slipstream. Precious time we can never reclaim. The more mundane the hours, the faster they slip through our fingers.
The year ahead is shaping up to be a transformative one for your writer. A change of career is imminent, and alongside that, the shedding of old skin and growth of new side ventures. Change is good. As is taking a chance. It is challenging, reinvigorating and necessary to nurture one’s soul, to feel alive. It can also be – and is – terrifying.
But in order to truly embrace change, it’s important to pause, breathe, and look back at from whence we came. To do that, we must find time and space to be alone with our thoughts – something which, in the current climate, is becoming harder and harder to do. As most people were returning to work last week, I was boarding a plane in our wonderful local airport, with a bag of books and a pair of walking shoes – a solo travel gift from past me.
The timing, between jobs, couldn’t have been better. In 2023, Ballina celebrated a tercentenary. These occasions don’t come around very often so the opportunity must be grabbed – and grab it, we did. While fun and fulfilling, the calendar of events was constant, relentless and tiring. In the aftermath of something so momentous, it felt vital to look back and reflect. To pause, catch breath and rest.
Scrolling through my phone in departures, I stumbled across a TED talk by Bhakti Sharma, entitled ‘What Open Water Swimming Taught Me About Resilience’. Bhakti Sharma is an accomplished athlete, having completed a world record-breaking swim in the freezing waters of Antarctica and courageously crossed the English Channel – ‘the Everest of open-water swimming’. And yet, during the course of her talk, it became apparent that while her sporting accomplishments and commitment speak for themselves, her sport’s greatest gift to her has been isolation.
“I have spent hours,” she says, “looking into the infinite, seemingly bottomless ocean underneath me, with nothing to keep me company, but my own thoughts. And so, I have not only been tested as a swimmer, but also as a thinking, feeling, imaginative human being… Through open water swimming, I have come to know myself in ways that I could have never expected to.”
While a record-breaking athlete I am not, something in Bhakti’s words resonated with me, particularly in the aftermath of a year that allowed for very little alone time.
Way back, in 2011, myself and a couple of pals set out to walk a chunk of the Camino de Santiago. Being the least athletic of the trio (something that remains the case) and therefore moving at a slower pace, I often found myself hiking the trails of Northern Spain in isolation. Pushing myself physically, while being alone with my own thoughts with no distractions, it was challenging. But it was also one of the most formative experiences of my lifetime, leading me to make some major life decisions in the aftermath.
“In the middle of the ocean, there is nowhere to hide,” says Sharma. “I have to face my internal demons, just as much as I have to taste the salt in the sea, feel the chafing on my skin, and acknowledge the whales swimming beside me. I hate it, and I love it.”
On the Camino, there was nowhere to hide from myself and my thoughts. I had some demons to face and defeat. And in spite of myself, I returned from that trip not just with some ghastly blisters, but with a new clarity, a knowledge of myself and a confidence I would never have discovered while sitting at home.
With Sharma’s words echoing in my ears and the intensity of 2023 in the rear-view mirror, I took to the Spanish hills once again last week, to be alone with my thoughts. Though even less athletic now than in 2011 – and certainly not fit to break any world records – the solitude of walking for miles along the coast in the sunshine, looking back and looking forward, with only my aching feet to distract me, was just as restorative as it was over a decade ago. The prospect of change feels far less daunting now.
When we pause and remove ourselves from the everyday and shut out distractions, the competing thoughts that occupy our minds enjoy the luxury of settling and organising themselves. Time out to breathe, be alone with our minds, does not need to involve getting on a plane; it can be as simple as sitting alone in a quiet space and checking in with ourselves.
If we only do one thing for ourselves in 2024, let it be spending time with ourselves. Time to embrace our own company, and get to know ourselves a bit better and to face some of our own demons. To reconnect with nature and with where we have come from, but more importantly, in a life that is short and precious, with where we want to go. We owe it to ourselves.
OPINION: The benefits of solitude
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20.01.2024
I find it quite incredible that we are already two weeks into the new year. Perhaps it’s just a side-effect of ageing, but the days, the days seem to whizz by at a speed that leaves us hopelessly grasping at their shadows from the slipstream. Precious time we can never reclaim. The more mundane the hours, the faster they slip through our fingers.
The year ahead is shaping up to be a transformative one for your writer. A change of career is imminent, and alongside that, the shedding of old skin and growth of new side ventures. Change is good. As is taking a chance. It is challenging, reinvigorating and necessary to nurture one’s soul, to feel alive. It can also be – and is – terrifying.
But in order to truly embrace change, it’s important to pause, breathe, and look back at from whence we came. To do that, we must find time and space to be alone with our thoughts – something which, in the current climate, is becoming harder and harder to do. As most people were returning to work last week, I was boarding a plane in our wonderful local airport, with a bag of books and a pair of walking shoes – a solo travel gift from past me.
The timing, between jobs, couldn’t have been better. In 2023, Ballina celebrated a........
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