By Rory McNelley, Staff Writer

If you’ve met me, you know how much I love time alone. I don’t think our generation appreciates the value of boredom.

I won’t lie, I’m boring. I spend Saturday nights reading my book and washing my sheets. I’m usually in bed by 10 p.m. But I like it that way. I am not saying I never go out or that you shouldn’t go out or hang out with friends, but I am telling you there’s value in enjoying your own company. 

Loving alone time is similar to a runner’s high. At first, it’s hard and you don’t want to do it. Then one day, it clicks. It clicked for me when I had COVID-19. I was alone in my room for a week and all of a sudden, I loved it. I have realized there is a difference between being alone and being lonely.

When we sit with ourselves, we learn to acknowledge our emotions and process things, and we learn more about ourselves. If you cannot sit with yourself without wanting to scroll on your phone, connect with other people or see what other people are doing, you aren’t learning about yourself.

Our culture makes us feel like boredom is death. Society says we should either be hanging out with people, scrolling on our phones, working a full-time job or on FaceTime all day. Feeling like our life is boring isn’t making any of us happy, so why are we keeping up with this standard? 

When the internet was invented, connection spread like wildfire. Everyone was now able to connect across platforms, countries and continents. But I think that is when we lost the ability to connect with ourselves. When I was always doing things with people, I didn’t have my own identity. 

Say you and a friend are at a coffee shop. You get a chai latte with oat milk and it’s the best thing you’ve ever tasted. Then, your friend gets her vanilla latte and hates it. 

“This is terrible, we are never coming here again,” she says. I think most of us would find ourselves dismissing our own perspective and agreeing blindly. “Yeah, mine isn’t great either.” Because we are always sharing every single moment together, none of us are our own person. Throwing yourself into a world where everyone’s opinions affect everyone else doesn’t exactly feel good.

When I started to spend more time alone, I began to become my own person. I don’t have the “post or it didn’t happen” mindset, I don’t worry about disagreeing with others and I know what I want. I am not saying you are a mind-controlled robot if you are constantly surrounded by many perspectives, but I am saying that we need time alone to realize who we are when no one’s around.  

We find out who our friends are when we spend one-on-one time with them. We find out who they are when no one’s around. Why don’t we give that to ourselves? Push through the boredom and learn to be your own best friend. It’s the best decision I have ever made.