The courage to be with yourself

I just want you to fully be with yourself.

Without the chatter. Without the assumptions of who you are supposed to be.

I just want you to fully be with yourself—to be able to sit quietly on a bench without doing anything. To look at the world without having to jump in to change it or fix it. To examine yourself without having to jump in to change it or fix it.

I want you to be fully with yourself, without devices. Without social media. Without having to doom scroll.

If you cannot be fully with yourself, I beg of you to make this your first and one priority.

Every human should know how to sit quietly and look out a window.

Every human should know how to just be, without having to do, and have that be okay.

Every human should know how to be fully with themselves and not require the validation of someone else’s company.

I’m not someone freaking out over the dawn of every new technology. I appreciate the gifts technology brings.

I also have a healthy distrust of the ways in which a new generation can’t put their phone in a room, or feels compelled to respond to every notification that pings.

This is madness, I think, this inability to be with yourself and thinking some little hand-held device is supposed to control your life.

The courage to be with yourself is rich and true. It will feel uncomfortable if you aren’t accustomed to it. It might feel like a waste of time, or there might be anxiety that you’re “missing something.”

The only thing you ever miss, is the moments of your life when you’re distracted.

You won’t get those moments back.

Hone the skill of how to be with yourself. Take one small moment, build on that. Do it again. Then again, then again, until you are full.