Our generation seems to have developed a collective obsession with aloneness.
Log onto any Millenial-run website and you’ll see it everywhere:
’14 Signs True Love Is Just Around The Corner For You.’
‘10 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Settle For The F*ckboy’
‘7 Subtle Signs That There Isn’t Going To Be A Second Date’
Love is an important part of all of our lives – but we’ve gone from investing ourselves in it to obsessing over it.
We lament over our aloneness. We dissect it. We pick our flaws apart in the mirror, criticize the choices we’ve made, and measure what we have up against what our coupled-up friends have – wondering why their equation adds up to togetherness and something about our own does not.
We formulate excuses as to why we’re alone. We develop complex explanations and psychological equations to explain away the absence of someone important in our lives.
But there’s one thing we too often fail to consider and it’s this:
Maybe it doesn’t matter if you’re the prettiest, ugliest, richest, poorest, dullest or most fascinating person in the world – you’re alone because you just are.
You’re alone because things haven’t worked out for you thus far and maybe that’s genuinely it. Maybe your flaws are not at all what is keeping you out of love. After all, there are plenty of other flawed people out there, wandering around looking for someone as imperfect as themselves.
Chances are, you’re alone because life is one big crapshoot.
Because the cards fall differently for all of us, and some people find the loves of their lives at seventeen and others find them at thirty-seven and others find them at ninety-five and some never find them at all.
But if there’s one thing that’s not going to help you find the person you’re meant to spend forever with, it’s obsessing over not having found them.
The more you agonize over being alone, the more pressure you put on every new relationship you enter into. The more you convince yourself that a relationship is the answer to all of your problems, the more you idealize and project upon new partners, ending potential relationships before they even have the chance to begin.
The more you analyze, dissect and obsess over the reasons why you haven’t found love yet, the more self-conscious you become. And the more your loneliness turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So instead of obsessively analyzing why you don’t have someone special in your life, what if you channeled your efforts into the actual living of it?
Instead of wondering why you’re alone, wonder how many days it would take you to pen the next great American novel. Wonder what the Northern lights look like from the Arctic oceanside. Wonder about cities you haven’t explored and books you haven’t read and experiences you haven’t had because you’ve been too preoccupied searching for the love that you cannot seem to find.
Instead of wondering why you’re alone, wonder what you could become through your aloneness. Wonder how many adventures you can partake in, how many lives you can lead, how many ways you can find to change and alter and expand yourself into a bigger, greater version of yourself.
Instead of wondering when someone else is finally going to accept you for everything you are, step up to the plate and be the person who accepts you for who you are – even if right now, who you are is a flawed person. A broken person. A lonely person.
But a lonely person who is capable of absolutely incredible things.
And one who is finally ready to start going after them. 
