THE LONELINESS VORTEX:

[Pravin Kumar]

The Loneliness Vortex:

When the mind settles creating a story that requires reaching for something lessens. In the process the loneliness vortex disappears and it’s simply because an “I” story of needing to fill it isn’t created...

The loneliness vortex only seems to get wider as one ages, it doesn’t really, what happens is there are just less distractions so “I” takes more of a hold. The natural process of life seems to be to stay busy trying to constantly figure things out and regardless of what exactly the figuring out is, it certainly creates many distractions. There are periods in between being busy where a person has some idle time and probably feels the loneliness vortex, but this idle time doesn’t usually last very long because the next distraction returns. A being busy mindset last most of your life, but there does come a time that the natural process of being busy lessens. At this stage many people experience a loneliness vortex that hasn’t been noticed before. It will either be addressed by looking inward or you will get busy again becoming distracted trying to figure out how to fill the loneliness.

Eventually being busy will end for whatever reason, and unfortunately for most people without being busy the loneliness vortex is in control. Many elderly people struggle with this because there just isn’t a lot happening. Kids are grown, retirement, house paid off, more time behind you than what’s ahead, yada, yada, yada, and the list goes on. I was busy for forty nine years using distraction after distraction filling the loneliness vortex. There were very brief periods of not having this loneliness, but these periods were far and few in between. That is until eleven years ago when all that was there was the loneliness vortex; I began to sit and simply look inward. This allowed me to see the distractions of my “I” needing to attach to the loneliness vortex story. As I sat my mind settled and thus the loneliness lessened. In the process the loneliness vortex actually disappeared and it was simply because the “I” story of being lonely wasn’t being created...

MICHAEL CUPO