Living alone can conjure up those overused images, the spinster, the cat lady, or someone who is just plain lonely.
With today’s over-reliance on being social, albeit through our telephones, maybe we need to reappraise why living by ourselves isn’t a bad thing. Here are the best things are about living this underappreciated art.
Pro #1: You Have Complete Control
From the big things to the little things, you’ve got nobody to argue with. You can pick the best moving company, real estate agents, landlords, and area you want to live in. This is freedom in its most absolute form! And it’s something that colors your entire life. The trials and tribulations of living with someone who has their own loose opinion of what “clean and tidy” means can be very frustrating. It can get you down, especially if you live with someone you have nothing in common with. It could even get to the point that you purposely avoid them, and this becomes a very difficult living situation. Nobody wants to feel like this ever!
Pro #2: It Gives You The Opportunity To Get In Touch With Yourself
Some people might view living by themselves as boring, but nowadays we don’t have the opportunity to even get bored. There are so many distractions out there we could spend our entire lives not taking the opportunity to get to know ourselves properly. We can constantly go from social group to social group, function to function, and this takes over our entire lives.
Living by yourself means that you begin to find out what you really want. And you can’t do this until you strip away all of those things and get to know yourself. You may realize that because there’s not so much of a challenge anymore, and you get to do whatever you want, you may want someone to live with, and you miss this low-level conflict. But we can’t discover this until we get truly bored.
Pro #3: The Real World Challenges
Living by yourself means that you have to take extra care in almost every aspect of your life. If you live in an apartment all by yourself you could view it as being “vulnerable”, but if you want your own space, you have to be prepared for the challenges that come along with it. In many ways, this is good for us, because it toughens us up, and we don’t rely on others to get us through difficult situations. If the boiler breaks down in the middle of the night and we’re not used to getting on the phone to the professionals, this can train us up for those real-world scenarios that we may have avoided before.
Living by yourself doesn’t mean being lonely; in fact, it means that you are comfortable being on your own. There are people that go and watch a movie by themselves that end up on the receiving end of pity, but really, those people who need to be surrounded by others constantly don’t know the pleasures of being by themselves. Live by yourself, and you may learn a lot!
