Fortress of solitude
We’ve all had help at one point in our lives. To put it bluntly, anyone who tells you differently is a liar. The road to success includes numerous factors, such as what and who enters your life, assisting you on that journey. However, that same road requires a level of solitude, which must be appreciated.
Solidarity
Solidarity can be a fantastic or tumultuous thing. It can leave you feeling lonely, but also with the chance of growing outside of others. Without a doubt, one of the most influential factors in my growth has been solidarity. Being alone is tough. Feeling like you have no one is rough. But when life forces you to be in that kind of situation, you have no one else to depend on but yourself. This type of environment can change you for the better if you allow it to.
Solitude can make you or break you. It’s challenging to be in the confines of oneself and mind. But it leaves you with no other choice but to face the music. Perhaps no other aspect of life forces you to deal with the consequences of your decisions like solidarity. When you have no one to turn to or nothing to distract you, you don’t necessarily have a choice but to address your problems head-on.
Fortress
Once again, the fortress of solitude can be a great place, if you let it. It’s a place where your thoughts become actions, and your actions, over time, shift your circumstances. It’s a place of recognition—one where you recognize your mistakes, issues, growth, abilities, and inabilities. In order to be solitary, you must be alone. While we never want to force ourselves to be alone for a substantial amount of time as we are natural-born communicators, we all need time to ourselves.
In any friendship or relationship, you must make time for yourself, time to reflect upon the battles that matter. If you give your time and energy to everything, you will never get anywhere. We must weed out the struggles that aren’t worth it and focus our attention on the ones that matter the most and instill maximum growth. After all, we must look in the mirror to ultimately change.
Reflection
Change starts with you looking at yourself and how you treat others. It begins with reflection. Yet, most of us do our best reflecting when we are alone. Why is this? Well, because we have no one to shape or change our thoughts. In moments of solitude, we can let out every single thing we are thinking or emotion we are feeling without being judged. Unless we criticize ourselves, but even then, just saying things out loud or thinking about them is a start.
Without some solidarity in any relationship, it will fail. You can’t do and be everything for someone. You may ask yourself why the person you’re in a relationship with doesn’t value solidarity; maybe they want to do everything with you. It could be coming from a place of genuine companionship, as they enjoy your company and being around you, because to them, it just makes everything better. However, we must protect our individuality.
If you don’t take the time to take care of yourself, you can’t take care of anyone else. I am this way in the sense that I often put others before me, even if it means neglecting myself in some way. But throughout the past few years, I’ve tried to do this less and less because I am coming to know that I can only attempt to help someone change, but I can’t force them. You can lead a horse to the water, but you can’t make it drink.
This saying has been a fixture in my life recently, due to the realization that I can’t help people who don’t want to help themselves, and the most troublesome part is I must be okay with it. Otherwise, I stand to ruin my own peace in the process, and I’ll never truly be happy. By making time for myself with no distractions, standing in solitude, and embracing my individuality, I give myself the best chance to reflect and ultimately succeed at building any relationship.
