Modern people often feel involuntarily and exhausted because of the accelerated pace of life and the explosion of information. When can I pause? Take a breath? Do what you like? Listen to the wind and rain or stare at the night sky? The answer is: when you are alone.
Stephanie Rosenbloom is a senior columnist in The New York Times. After completing a task called "Alone in Paris", she still remembers Paris. What she misses is not the scenery and food in Paris, but the other self in Paris-what makes her better control of time, keener senses and fuller heart when she is in Paris?
Rosenbloom is confused. In order to find the answer, she decided to return to Paris. Besides, she also chose three other cities, Istanbul, Florence and new york. The first two are the author's favorite cities, and new york is her home. Rosenbloom believes that as long as she can find the answer to loneliness and happiness through this trip, she can adopt similar methods in her future life, so that she can get the same beautiful feelings even in her daily life.
Later, Rosenbloom wrote a book about the feelings of these four journeys, entitled Exquisite Loneliness. In this book, the author not only shared the feelings of traveling, but also introduced some cutting-edge research results in the fields of psychology and sociology, and added his own thoughts on solitude and happiness. Rosenbloom said that this is not only a book about travel, but also a love letter, which is specially written for people who like to be alone and are willing to think, create, learn skills and solve problems when they are alone. She hopes that this book can help more people to open the "road of thinking", explain the fun of being alone for themselves, and find what they want in solitude.
Exquisite solitude mainly includes three parts:
Since entering the information age, killing time has become particularly easy-just surfing the Internet, following dramas, brushing WeChat and Weibo, watching videos and videos, and it will be gone in a few hours, so people feel more and more willing to be alone.
However, a person like this is led by information, and facing a computer or a mobile phone for a long time will inevitably lead to backache and dizziness ... So this kind of solitude is not only "exquisite solitude", but also often accused of "killing time", which makes people uneasy.
So what should Exquisite Solitude look like?
Whether solitude is voluntary or not seems to be the key factor to bring happiness.
Because of being stood up or abandoned by social relations, people tend to be disgusted and lonely, which has nothing to do with happiness. On the other hand, active selection is different. When you want to be alone and try to create conditions, you can calmly meet or even ignore the questioning eyes of others, because at this time your attention is entirely on yourself, not others.
Interestingly, Darwin once made a famous point that human beings hate loneliness. But he really likes a person. He spends six hours in his study alone every day, and he likes to walk in the nearby Woods. On his way, he found many solutions to problems, so he called this road "the road of thinking". It was in the "Road of Thinking" and his research that Darwin completed the book "The Origin of Species". It can be seen that a positive solitude experience not only makes people feel sad, but also makes it easy to get more beneficial thinking and outstanding creation.
In recent years, there have been many scientific researches on how to get happiness. One of the most famous is the theory of "flow", the core point of which is that when people are completely immersed in what they are doing and forget themselves, and achieve their goals (maybe big or small, maybe climbing mountains, or just finishing a flower arrangement), they will have a sense of happiness. To achieve this state, solitude is one of the main ways.
So, now you should understand why some people are very anxious to watch funny videos while brushing their mobile phones, because those tasks make them unable to concentrate on enjoying the present happiness. When a person bakes bread wholeheartedly, she smells the aroma of yeast, feels the smoothness and softness of dough, feels the texture of butter, and presents the beauty when eggs are beaten into flour. It is concentration that makes the human body feel the happiness of being alone.
Research shows that "taste" is a very good way to get more beautiful experiences in concentrated solitude. "Taste" refers not only to the enjoyment of pure taste, but also to the way one manages or pays attention to all positive experiences, including taste. For example: mobilize the sense of smell to experience the aroma of the baguette, mobilize the sense of hearing to listen to the sound of the waves beating against the rocks, mobilize the sense of touch to experience the silky feeling of coffee, and so on.
Well, now we finally understand that "exquisite solitude" means that we actively focus on the present, actively mobilize all our senses to experience it carefully, and finally get a happy and beautiful experience. Sometimes it's just a feeling, which makes us cherish our present life more and love ourselves more. Sometimes we can make some achievements through thinking and hard work, such as completing an article, a painting and a song. ...
Sounds really good, doesn't it? But the problem is coming, and everyone understands the truth, but it is easier said than done-research shows that most people spend nearly 47% of their waking hours thinking about things that have nothing to do with what they are doing-from this perspective, in order to gain concentration and learn to taste the present, we still need to master certain methods.
Some tips can help you:
When you are alone, remind yourself that all this is fleeting. For example, a great meal is about to be finished; This unforgettable trip is coming to an end-this reminder will make you realize that the good times in front of you are about to pass away, which will make you cherish it and have a strong sense of pleasure. From a psychological point of view, this is because the scarcer time is, the more motivated people are, which further explains why we always know how to cherish it after losing it.
Therefore, in order to prevent regret after loss, the trick is to cherish every moment in life. As Jobs said, "Treat every day as if it were your last, and you will relax."
I feel the same way. In June in Saint-Germain Depe, when she was sitting alone at a table on the sidewalk, a heavy rain had just passed, listening to the murmur of French around her, smelling the aroma of coffee, and at the same time, the breeze gently stirred her hair. At that time, Rosenbloom thought that the wonderful moment of the first dawn of heavy rain would never come again. So she kept these feelings in her heart and wrote them in a book, which made this energy not only beautiful at that time, but also particularly vivid in her memory.
This refers to focusing on the feelings of a certain sense to enhance the experience of the current thing. The trick is to close one of the senses. For example, close your eyes and smell the flowers deeply (smell), listen to the tinkling sound of raindrops on the eaves (hearing), and experience the coolness of the stream infiltrating your feet (touch) ... and so on.
"Self-satisfaction" means that when we finally achieve our goal, we will review our feelings and double our joy in the process of expectation and hard work.
Rosenbloom said that she had been waiting for a trip to Paris for a long time, so when she handed her room key to the front desk, left the hotel and walked on the deserted street, recalling her efforts and difficulties for this trip, she suddenly felt that the whole Paris was welcoming her with open hands, which was the joy brought by "self-congratulations".
This is actually a mental snapshot-recording the details of some beautiful scenes in your mind (not limited to vision) and playing them back constantly. For Rosenbloom, the blue-and-white parasol outside the Paris Cafe, the spire of the Florence church, the smell of rain in the Istanbul air, and the crisp sound of porcelain cups and saucers colliding in the new york restaurant are the memory buildings of her solo travel, which kept coming to her when she wrote this book.
There is no denying that some people in real life are naturally keen, while others are neurotic. However, the above methods can make you feel more delicate, happy and calm when you are alone.
No matter how much we love traveling, it is not the normal state of life after all. Therefore, in order to get the lonely experience of daily life like traveling, Rosenbloom finally returned to his hometown, new york, and began to explore the life around him after traveling to three cities. Finally, she put forward several simple methods of solitude for us to experience and try.
Many people can eat fast food by themselves, but can't enjoy a big meal by themselves. They are always worried about other people's strange eyes. Facts have proved that people show extraordinary anxiety about what others think of themselves.
Someone once did an experiment: show several groups of photos of one person dining and two people dining together, and ask them to comment. I thought that people who eat alone would get more negative comments, but I didn't expect my companions to be belittled. There is no difference between the two. There is no need to sell yourself short just because you eat alone.
As Rosenbloom said, eating out alone is a way to experience local life, and it would be better if you could sit by the window. You can watch the guests in the restaurant while enjoying the delicious food, turn around and look out of the window, and maybe you will find a small shop you like and become a place to stroll after dinner. The author admits that she is actually a little shy. Although she is a little worried about other people's opinions, she values herself more.
It turns out that the world is the same and can't get rid of the influence of others' eyes. It's just that sometimes you need to make a choice for yourself. Find a restaurant you've always wanted to go to, put on your favorite clothes and enjoy a big meal alone! When you don't face others, you face the whole world.
This is much easier than eating alone. After all, whether others go alone or not, his attention is more focused on the exhibits than on the lonely travelers.
For you who visit the exhibition alone, the biggest advantage is that you can master the rhythm of the visit yourself, immerse yourself in it, watch and communicate with the works of art that attract you, without being distracted by the preferences of your peers. The researchers pointed out that the noble, simple and even magical atmosphere of the museum can make people "reflect, calm and free, and let visitors increase their self-awareness without social constraints."
So when you are depressed and have nowhere to go, you might as well come to the museum for a lonely healing. An empty and quiet environment can calm you down, while silent exhibits will not only attract your attention because they bear the memory of time or the mood of the creator, but also produce a * * * sound, which will make you forget your pain temporarily and even inspire you to open yourself up, let go of the past and welcome the future. ...
Balzac once said, "Walking is just life, and walking is life". So walking on the way to work is not the best time to experience solitude, because there are time and destination restrictions, you can't guarantee to enjoy the scenery without burden.
Comparatively speaking, walking is the best way to experience loneliness. In the study of happiness, people find that expectation is a free form of happiness, and it is also a situation that is least susceptible to developments. If you want to get the happiness of this expectation, you can't stick to a certain trip, because then the expectation will be inconsistent with the actual situation and there will be no chance of coincidence.
Strolling just meets the above elements. You just wander around the street, you don't need to have a clear goal. You may often find unexpected surprises.
It is said that when the author travels in Paris, it is difficult to find a quiet place to be alone, because there is no off-season. So she just turned into a sparsely populated path at random, and didn't want to find a drifting book in that process ("book drifting" is an activity of bibliophiles, and people "release" books to a certain place for others to find and read); When I was in Florence, the author noticed the street sign modified by the street artist Clay Abraham, who was especially good at skillfully using stickers to turn arrows into angels and make ordinary street signs interesting.
Gary snyder, a poet, said that loneliness gives us a kind of "super vision", which makes our senses more acute and enhances our sensitivity to everyday things that are easily overlooked at ordinary times-the bustling crowd ignores the original street art creation, but the author finds a wonderful state of solitude in the crowd in an unexpected way and enjoys it.
This spontaneous game is not original by the author. Leonardo often looked for unique men and women to follow when walking, and then drew them. Coincidentally, action art Acconci followed strangers, and recorded their experiences with notes and photos after they entered private space.
As ordinary people, we can lock in the forms we are interested in, invent brand-new games and start our own exploration journey. The secret of happiness in walking is to keep an open attitude towards unexpected things, let go of expectations and let our hearts leave enough space for unpredictable things.
Research shows that walking can really improve creative thinking ability significantly. Many successful people are well aware of this. For example, Jobs often walks and thinks when encountering problems, looking for solutions. Besides, when thinkers, artists and even many ordinary people patrol the streets, there are countless inspiring examples. So when you are confused and dizzy, you might as well take a walk outdoors, which can not only relax your mood, adjust your rhythm, but also stimulate your thinking and creativity.
Rosenbloom found some very good ways to be alone by traveling alone in three cities. After that, she returned to new york and made a concrete plan to get to know the city where she lived again. She designated every Tuesday as "Sightseeing Day", forcing herself to try new things once a week with the same mood and attitude as traveling, and rediscovered her love for new york in the process.
For the city where we live, the fixed life at two o'clock and one line every day often makes us turn a blind eye to the beauty we have. In order to get more happiness, Rosenbloom called on us to learn "exquisite loneliness", starting from being familiar with our hometown. However, for ordinary people, inertia is the most difficult to break. Therefore, the author puts forward a good suggestion. She asked us to try to do "daily holiday" taste exercises-do what we like for 20 minutes every day for a week, without taking too long, but insist on it every day, from which we can experience the happiness of being alone and finally turn it into the normal state of life.
Exquisite solitude makes us understand that there is no lack of beauty in life, but a lack of eyes and hearts to discover beauty. When you learn Exquisite Solitude, you will find a brand-new key, which can lead you to take off the mask in public places, be yourself, adjust your mental state, stimulate more creative thinking, and find an excellent way to solve problems-in short, it will make you gain more joy and happiness in life and nourish yourself.