No more needy days
Erich Fromm once said, “The ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love.”
A client who has been having one-off sessions every few months has found that she has been able to resolve her problems at work, her colleagues have asked her for advice and her performance has improved.
But lately, work has been getting busier and she has been getting less feedback from people around her, and she feels a bit lonely and wonders if she has said something strange. The fact is that nothing bad has been said, so she reminds herself that this is okay.
Her mother is getting busier and they don’t see each other as often as they used to. So she feels that is just her parents’ life and so she can’t help it, but still she feels lonely.
She is more concerned about whether her child gets on with his friends than whether he is good at his studies or sports.
She understands that she misinterprets the facts and that the other person has their reasons, so she accepts that “it can’t be helped”, but she said, “I don’t have anything to fill my heart with”.
I said: “Your work, your parents, your children are all connected to ‘sadness’. In other words, you feel sad because you are looking for something out there to fulfill you. I used to have sadness, so I know exactly how you feel. You need to fill yourself up.
Two days after the 11th of March 2011 was my birthday. I was supposed to hold the Hitomism Award at the Imperial Hotel that day, but I had to cancel it and I was quite depressed about spending my birthday alone. I can’t believe that now!
Then I read the book “The art of loving” and met the words “The ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love.”. Then I practiced the art of loving through traveling alone.
The first person we should seek love from is oneself, love from others is no good if we don’t first love ourselves.
When I was six years old, my mother asked me, “What do you play at school? and I replied, “I play by myself”. My mother was so surprised that she threw me a big birthday party.
After all, in 2021 me, I’m still playing by myself and I’m very happy.