Alone but not lonely.

The other day I was reading an article about loneliness with a student of mine. The article said that loneliness can increase your chances of getting dementia. 

We talked about loneliness and the impact living in a foreign country has on your mental health. She asked me if I ever felt lonely living in rural Japan? 

 I think everyone feels lonely from time to time but then you bounce back. You go out with a friend and sit in your favorite coffee shop or maybe just go window shopping. 

But what if you don’t have a social life? What if you dont have friends? Does that sound weird? Do I really not have friends? 

Tea with myself…..

Japan is a beautiful country and we are fortunate to live in a breathtaking rural area straight out of a Totoro anime movie. 

I always walk the fields alone taking notice of the changing seasons. The subtle differences in sunlight or scent of grasses. 

 I watch as the buds of spring blossom and delicate pink and white blooms transform my village into a dreamscape. Cherry blossom branches drape over the riverside and I walk on a carpet of petals watching the ducks paddle down stream. 

Spring gently gives way to the heat of summer hand fans, plates of watermelon and the deafening sound of cicadas. 

And now we are in late autumn. I walked through the rice fields this afternoon and the heady scent of freshly cut Chinese Lantern plants greets me and crows scour the fields. 

I never get tired of observing the natural world around me. I rarely ever get lonely. If I had my druthers I’d stay outside all day taking pictures of my observations. 

 

There are so many things to do in life and I try to do occupy myself with creativity. I’m teaching myself how to draw. I’ve got pencils and sketchbooks but I’m also enjoying digital art. 

The winter is approaching and my yarn will be hauled out of the closet. Cold weather, crochet and a hot cuppa… pure bliss. 

Autumn persimmons 

“love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude." 

Henry David Thoreau 

To be alone, yet not lonely, is to find oneself in the quiet company of the woods and streams, where solitude is not an absence but a presence. It is to wander the fields with no urgency, to sit by the water’s edge, and listen to the unspoken language of the earth. Here, in the stillness, one discovers that true contentment is found not in the company of others but in the depth of one’s own thoughts, where the soul is free to roam like the wild things around it.