MIRAI CODE · Return to Yourself
To You for Whom Time Alone Feels Unbearably Lonely
Being alone was never being left behind — it's the nearest time you have with yourself.
Mirai — a Future Decoder who reads the sounds of your name
A day off with no plans. A room gone utterly quiet. When you're alone, a feeling creeps in — as though the world has left you behind. Does that happen to you, too?
In my readings, I meet so many people who, to fill that loneliness, push themselves to go along with others — and end up only the more worn out.
— The truth is, I rather love my time alone. But I only came to realize it at the very bottom of my life.
Driven from my home by my husband. Job gone, place to live gone. After more than thirty years, I came back to the countryside in Oita where I was born and raised.
Until then, I had always been surrounded by people. I'd built communities; around me, it was always people, people, people. But — in the countryside I returned to, there was not one soul I knew. I had no idea what my old classmates were doing now. I couldn't even place my neighbors' faces.
Alone in an old country house — a kominka — just me, and the silence. "What do I do, from here?" "What is there that the me of now can even do?" There was a mountain of things to turn over in my mind. And yet —
that quiet time, with no one there, was — strangely — so very comfortable. For the first time in my life, it became time to face myself, slowly. Being alone was not being left behind. It was, at last, time to come home to myself.
Solitude is time to return to yourself
Time alone is not a thing to fear, nor is it only loneliness.
It is precious time — time to return to yourself.
In the midst of all that noise, it is drowned out. But there is a true voice, your own, that can be heard only within the quiet.
Rather than filling the loneliness with someone else
When you rush to fill loneliness with another person, you can end up clinging even to relationships that don't fit you.
But turn your view, just slightly — and make that time "time to grow friendly with yourself." Brew a tea you love. Simply drift, and do nothing at all. Treat yourself as your most honored guest.
The sounds of your name tie you back to "you"
In your quiet time alone, try, softly, calling to mind the sounds of your own name.
It becomes a gentle time — one that ties you, worn out from tending to everyone and everything, back once more to yourself.
What I am really doing, in every reading
So to those who carry loneliness, I never deny it. I say: "Let's make your time alone your ally."
In the end
To be alone is not to be lonely.
It is the closest time there is — the time you spend together with your own self.
May you come, little by little, to love that quiet. Even alone, you are perfectly all right.