LONELINESS vs MINDFULNESS, CAN MINDFULNESS REMEDY LONELINESS?

“Yesterday is gone, tomorrow has not yet to come. We have only today. Let us begin.”  -Mother Teresa

Loneliness should not be mixed with being alone. Being alone is a choice. You can be alone, even in a crowd. There is no feeling of sadness about it. But being lonely is an emotional state of mind and it is associated with deep sadness. Lonely people feel bad about themselves. They feel detached, unconnected and unloved. Their mind usually wanders and starts to follow random patterns of undesirable thoughts about the past and fearful prospects of the future. These thoughts patterns have a tendency turn into a vicious cycle, creating more loneliness and sadness that could lead to severe depression, even suicide.

We all have experienced the transient feeling of loneliness, when we faced an unexpected accident, disability or unemployment. We still could remember what a sad feeling we had.

Permanent feeling of loneliness is fast becoming a norm among elderly peoples. It is usually due to many factors, such as chronic illness, disability, hearing and visual loss, loss of loved one, mourning, grief, poverty, changing cultural norms, prejudice against old age or the inability to use the gadgets of modern communications technology.

Loneliness is bad for anybody’s health and wellbeing. Scientific studies have shown that loneliness dramatically increases the risk of premature death. On the other hand, many recent studies have revealed that certain mindfulness practices can significantly remedy the feeling of loneliness and increases the sociability of lonely people.

Then, let’s try to define what mindfulness is, and how does it remedy loneliness?  Wikipedia defines mindfulness as the psychological process of bringing one’s attention to experiences occurring at the present moment, which can be developed trough the practice of meditation and other training.

As I see it, the practice of mindfulness by formal way- taking a lotus position, staying silent, clearing your mind of any thoughts and concentrating only on your breath is not really practical for everyone, especially for older folks. There is another informal way practicing mindfulness. It is simply clearing your mind, willingly, of any undesirable thoughts and concentrating completely on the present moment of your daily activity of living, such as eating, breathing, walking, listening to your favorite music or interacting with the people around you. Your aim of doing this is to try very hard to discern every little nuances, feelings, pleasure of the activity, that you never paid attention to before. While doing this, you should never multi-task. For example, while eating, you should not watch TV or read a newspaper. You should only pay attention to your food- its look, smell, taste, flavor, texture and pleasure and satisfaction you get from it. This is called mindful eating. In other words, you are trying to learn to be aware of what is good in everything you do and in every person you interact with. You are making this approach of your second nature. Being good to yourself and everybody around you will reflect in your body language and mannerism. Your good heartedness will be noticed by other people, without you even uttering one word. Everybody would love to socialize with you.

So according to a favorite saying of Mauri people of New Zealand ,”turn your face to the sun and all the shadows fall behind you,” as I see it, this could only be achieved by mindfulness.