Alone and Enough

Alone, and Enough.

As I embarked on the 3-mile circuit loop to a waterfall in the Pocono Mountains, I was alone.   My 9 year old in an awesome outdoor camp, my 13 year old at the condo working on her summer homework, the children were engaged and I was elsewhere, alone.  

Alone is not something I have been with any frequency for about 18 months now.  As is true for many parents during the pandemic, sustained alone time is something like a faraway dream---it used to be part of my life, I blearly remember it….alone and not in a frenzy to produce or accomplish, well, it’s been a while.    As my sandals walked the root and pine-needed covered path, I realized instead of experiencing joy at my aloneness, my time in solitude, I was having some surprising feelings.   

I felt guilty for not using the time to check off my to do list, to produce while my children were engaged.  After some reflection, I let the guilt go, for I too, am a person, and I can engage in an activity simply for the sheer pleasure of it.  The next feeling was one of what I can only name as unworthiness--the beauty of what I was seeing--it felt more valuable to me if I’d have someone to share it with in that moment.  I returned to the mantra I’ve been using with sun salutations in yoga:   I am enough.  I do enough.  I have enough.   I’m beloved, too, and the beauty seen only by eyes is still beauty and is not diminished.   As I settled in to the  hike, enjoying the surroundings, I realized, I missed my kids, I felt like I’d want to show them this or that...and at the same time I was glad for the silence, for the peace, for the lack of demands on my attention, my energy, my time.  The familiar tug of the both/and of life.   

When I got to the waterfall, and stopped for a while to take in the beauty of the falls, the sound of rushing water that always seems to calm my soul and give me a little more space for my soul to breathe, I was content to be the witnesser of this waterfall to enjoy the gift of the perfect beauty, within the gift of solitude.  As I turned to hike out the many steps back up the path, and then the step incline up to the crest that overlooked a huge valley, I was so very glad that I was alone, not cajoling anyone up a hill.   I was alone.  Grateful my body could do this feat of climbing hills to enjoy beauty.   I was enough.  

What’s your favorite way to spend time alone?