(on solitude)

Athens Diary

Over the past few weeks, I’ve felt drawn back to my introverted side. I’ve always liked being alone, yet somehow forgot how beautiful it can be after spending most of last year alone due to illness (a very different kind of solitude and definitely the most isolating thing I’ve ever experienced).

Since being here, I’ve been reminded of what solitude feels like in a healthy body — spacious rather than confining. It made me realise that going through that last year, truly taught me to be alone. It taught me to sit with myself, to sit with my pain and to hold myself. Being alone here feels incredibly effortless and far less intimidating after this experience and I’ve been feeling so grateful for this healthy body and really celebrated my energy, strength and independence I gained from last year.

What I love about traveling alone, or simply being somewhere new is how my vision sharpens. My eyes feel hungry. I start paying attention to the smallest details. I reconnect with the joy of observing life instead of rushing through it.

It’s funny how everything feels so quite and yet I’ve felt so alive these past few days. Doing something for the first time is so refreshing. It feels like my mind is opening to all these new things, words, mapping out the city, observing….

I already had so many moments of creative bliss here. It’s incredible how quickly you can reach that state of creating if you make room for it. If you allow yourself to to arrive, to breathe, to reconnect with yourself in a softer, slower way.

There is a particular peace that comes with moving in quietness. I’ve truly enjoyed moving around anonymously. Just a body passing through streets that don’t ask anything of you, observing without being observed too closely.

Wandering around alone in a new city feels easier somehow. The other day, I took myself on a date: A really beautiful café (10AM apotheke ), a book I couldn’t put down (Swimming In the dark) , and a gallery visit (Breeder Gallery). It’s funny how much more open you become to people when you’re moving through a place alone. I ended up talking to the gallerist for a long time, sharing thoughts and stories, and when I left, he gifted me a poster. A small gesture, but one that felt like a quiet reminder that connection can appear in the most unexpected places when you’re open to it.

I ended up having dinner with a friend from Berlin at a very hip but incredibly delicious restaurant (ΛΙΝΟΥ ΣΟΥΜΠΑΣΗΣ ΚΑΙ ΣΙΑ). Through him, I met people who live in Athens and after two stops at wine bars (Wine is fine & Kennedy), we found ourselves at a very fun home party where I met some of my very first friends here. I never intended to go out here, but getting a glimpse into how people celebrate here felt like way of being let in.

A podcast that touched up on some topics around solitude that really inspired me:(especially from minute 29:10)

People are drawn to the easy and to the easiest side of the easy. But it is clear that we must hold ourselves to the difficult as it is true for everything alive. Everything in nature grows and defends itself in its own way and against all opposition, straining from within and at any price to become distinctively itself. 
It is good to be solitary because solitude is difficult and that a thing is difficult must be even more of a reason for us to undertake it.

And then he says, “To love is good too, for love is difficult. For one person to care for another, that is perhaps the most difficult thing required of us.”

And he really emphasizes the need to love from that place of solitude, that love is not about merging, but it is about being oneself fully and to love from that place of fullness.

“For love is not about merging. It is a noble calling for the individual to ripen, to differentiate, to become a world in oneself in response to another. Become yourself before you join with another human being.”