Ask HN: How to be alone?

First thing: No it is not normal thing to be alone. We humans are social animals. Once we are isolated we usually die soon, so take that seriously.

Being isolated from your tribe used to be a worse punishment than death. The greeks called that punishment ostracism. El mio Cid was the Spanish representative case.

In the US there is an epidemy of loneliness.

So, what to do? First recognise that this is a problem and do not dig deeper. Do not isolate yourself more. Do not play vdeogames, do not read books until you fix it.

My main advice is to stop thinking too much about yourself, think about others.

I was into religious(Cristian catholic) orgs and I helped old people(something I did not like), I helped poor people on the streets(liked it more) and I helped drug addicts and war refugees.

Helping drug addicts were a pain on the aßß, but once you make someone get out, he or she becomes a friend for life. It is like the friendships that are done in fighters of a war. Once you have put your life on the hands of someone else and trusted someone else so much, nothing can break that friendship.

If you think about that in a meta way, I was helping people that were marginalised, that were alone, and in the process I could not be alone. I did it in a religious group(a tribe in itself)

Thanks to this experience I can make friends very fast in a new place, something few adults know how to do.

If you are going to read, read a book called "How to influence people and make friends", but do not read the new book that is a badly revised book by the incompetent descendants of the writer, read the old original book.

But reading books is not going to help because you need action first, not reflection, and action is going to be painful for a while, and you have to endure the pain until it becomes easy. The best advise is to get out there, try hard, fail spectacularly and only then read the book.

Stop thinking about yourself, me, me and me. We are not wired to work for us alone. We are worked for working for others: Our tribe, our children, our family.

Instead of not trying to be alone, focusing on yourself (me, me and me) start thinking on helping other people that are alone. Start thinking on creating your own tribe or joining a new tribe. It can be a maker space, a group for hiking or helping or teaching kids.

disagree. I've felt the same after reading the same but I believe op tries just to point out that when you're the best version of yourselves, by removing the common denominator of bad versions, you'll be noticed more and that presents an interesting way for people to present a chance themselves to hear/see you. From there you get to go and may be, may be you find yourselves with a good friend. More importantly,Ithe confidence you'll get out of this is immense and you'll feel peace spending time for yourselves instead of feeling bad about having all the time and don't have anyone to spend with.. I cant say this advice helped me 100% but atleast it helped reduce the biased stress you put on yourselves.

This is going to be a bit dry, but I'm going to overshare too much if I won't keep it compact.

Solitude is a grace when you have deep respect / is inspired by the world, life, or something more specific, because you belong to a construct you have a model for, and thus you have an obvious list of actions and values.

It's very intimidating when you don't though, because you feel lost and can't see a clear way to gain momentum - and movement is life, as they say. There are two things that can help with that.

1. Listening the ideas of people that share a language and values with you, but don't necessarily share your vision. These are friends, most of the time. I get that you might've distanced from yours and they might've become entirely different people, but try reconnecting with them, one at a time. What mends you here is paying attention to what these people worry about - it gives you choice of things to be enthusiastic about (which then makes more friends, initiatives, impact, which are all "movement" of sorts). Try not to fall for trap of "spending time to silence the doubts and discomfort" as that's the same as doing "snooze" on an alarm. You can try to find those people on conferences, language clubs, but they're pretty much everywhere, you should just pick the context that feels least awkward to start a conversation in.

2. Change of context. There's a pretty big chance of gaining momentum while traveling, because your attention sharpens while you're in an environment that is hard to predict. You'll notice a lot of things you enjoy or hate, some of them might inspire you to study, try something new or empathize to a different way of living.

There's a bonus one - building something for someone is very fulfilling for the usual auditory of HN. There's a lot of people who'd be glad to use a helping hand, just pick a person / group you'd be ok to help and ask what can you do for them with your talents / skills. You'll be surprised how glad you'll be that you did that.

P.S. There are also thinner rationales behind what I've written, and I explained it rather mechanistically, but basically that's what helped me a lot when I suffered from an abrupt cutoff from the community that was a big part of my life.

P.P.S. I'm young, but it probably doesn't matter as much. Have a virtual hug from me ;). I think it's going to be better for you rather soon!

That implies they think some people (apparently the ones who eat takeout or don't go to gym), are just not "good enough" to have friends. It's an esteem for others issue.

You were together all your adult life - you’re not two people anymore, you’re cleaved as one.

And now that’s been severed. It will hurt.

New hobbies and getting your mind off things won’t cut it. If this was a physical injury you wouldn’t recommend someone start a new sport. Your soul is injured.

If the partnership is totally irreconcilable (or if it’s something more tragic, then my condolences) then you just need to accept that and take the time to heal. But is it irreconcilable?

Good luck.