I wish we would normalize needing others.
We are taught we must be strong. We are taught we must be tough. We are taught we must stand on our own, find strength in ourselves.
Yes, I agree with all of that. But that is only one part of life. Please, let’s teach, normalize and learn the other half too. It’s time to say it is all right to need others too. To want others. To need help, support, encouragement, love.
We are humans, we are social beings. We are not here to learn to be alone, to practice solitude, detachment, to learn being lone wolfs, distant stars, or passing strangers. It is all right to want this, there is nothing wrong about that. Even more, we all need time with ourselves, silence and solitude, peace and self-discovery. We should know how to be alone from time to time. We should know that in us is the power and the magic of the whole universe.
But, and this is so so important, we are not here just to learn all this, we are not part of this world to be separated from it. There are worlds where we can learn that. This is not one of them. This is the world where we learn how to be together. To cooperate. To support each other. To help and be helped. To give and receive. To love and be loved.
I see so many of us being almost (or not just almost…) ashamed of feeling this – of wanting someone beside us. We are told we don’t need anyone and that it is not healthy to depend. We are told not to be weak, or needy, or so stupidly emotional.
It is not weak to be human. It’s brave to want to love after heart was broken before, to want to give when it was disappointed before, to want to connect when it was left before. Solitude can be a choice, but it is not what the purpose of being human is. Our mission is to grow together. We are like trees – some stand alone and defy and resist the forces that want to break them, teaching us about the silent power within. Most grow in groups. They communicate. Touch. Sometimes intertwine.
So let’s normalize not wanting to be alone. We are not meant to be alone. We are meant to love and be loved, in love’s many magnificent, wonderful, magical forms.
Alenka H., 2023