The Gift of Solitude - Yogi

"A little while alone in your room will prove more valuable than anything else that could ever be given you." — Rumi

She sat alone at the café table, a quiet smile flickering at the corners of her lips. It was her birthday, though she wasn’t surrounded by balloons or chatter. No party hats, no fuss — just herself, a coffee, and a sense of contentment that seemed almost rare in a world addicted to noise. She told me, with the ease of someone who has lived long enough to trust her instincts, that she believes deeply in the power of me time.

Her style was understated but elegant, her presence calm, grounded. When she spoke, she held her shoulders with the upright posture of someone who has spent many mornings stretching and bending, her voice measured, reflective.

“Life is stressful,” she said plainly, “and we always need to be prepared for the tragedies that might come our way.” She wasn’t being dramatic; it was the kind of truth that comes with age, and perhaps with scars. Her belief wasn’t in waiting for peace to arrive, but in making deliberate interventions to sustain it.

Her interventions were simple, but sacred. Every morning, yoga — sometimes an hour, sometimes just five minutes. “Even the small practice matters,” she explained, lifting her hand gently as if to underline the word matters. There was also NuCalm — a daily ritual she described as drifting somewhere between waking and sleeping, a deep passive meditation that steadied her nerves. “I even schedule it in my diary,” she said with a little laugh, as though to remind herself that calm deserves as much space on the calendar as any meeting or obligation.

She spoke, too, of choices that sharpen resilience: cutting out alcohol in stressful periods, keeping the body engaged so the mind does not drown in its own noise, anchoring herself in family and friends, or simply exchanging a laugh with a stranger in a shop. “It reminds me that I’m still me,” she said softly. “That all of that,” she gestured vaguely, as if to a swirl of troubles just out of sight, “is not everything.”

What I noticed most wasn’t just her words but her stillness — the way she seemed to inhabit her own company without restlessness, her birthday celebrated not with a crowd but with herself. There was a lightness in that, a quiet form of joy.

As I left, the image that stayed with me was her calm resolve — like a tree standing steady through shifting weather. She reminded me that preparation for life’s inevitable storms doesn’t mean bracing against them constantly, but creating small daily rituals that root you, so that when the winds do rise, you remember who you are.

A Yogi

Yogi.