In all the years of our schooling we were likely never taught to love ourselves. Looking back to elementary school, friendship and kindness were preached to us by our teachers and parents. “Make friends and go play with the other kids,” they would say. If you were one of the kids that didn’t have friends your parents probably worried and even the other kids that were following the golden rule of friendship teased you. Because let’s face it, if you had no friends there must have been something wrong with you...right? Wrong.

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There’s a lot they do not tell you in school around the fact that it is okay to be by yourself. That is something that you will inevitably learn throughout life, however. I am not saying that schools should teach that loneliness is okay but being able to spend time alone is a very important quality for someone’s mental health. Some people grow up programmed to always have a friend by their side or even change themselves so they can save some face as a ten year old who does not want to be the weirdy that has no friends. In reality, however, you might naturally have this yearning to be isolated once in a while.

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I believe the lack of teaching children to accept who they are before you branch out to find friends has made us look at friendship in a different light - even if it is subconsciously. In a few words, we were pressured at a young age to be popular. We have likely conformed all these years to have friends because that’s what teachers and parents told you was necessary. Your perspective on friendship could be misconstrued - perhaps even your view of your own self worth.

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After we grow out of this foundation of friendship that has been ingrained in our heads since preschool, we have a hard time accepting the fact that friendship is much more important than the prevention of being the odd one out eating lunch by themselves. This principle of needing friends for the wrong reasons has turned parts of our grown generation into “fake” friends because we were brought up learning that we need friends in order to be “okay.” But something we were not told is that you could be the juiciest of peaches but that not everyone is going to like peaches. As we grow into ourselves and become a free thinking true individual we find out not everyone is going to like us.  The years of “if you’re kind and have friends people will like you” has made this really difficult for some to understand.

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The next generations deserve to learn about themselves and know that it is okay to be alone. So I challenge you to be alone once in a while and get to know yourself. Follow in the wise words from Eat, Pray, Love, “When I get lonely these days, I think: so BE lonely. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.”