It is so strange, comfortable, frightening, hard, and yet at the same time incredibly beautiful to be completely alone, with my thoughts.
This can be expressed very effectively in German too, because you can use two different adjectives for stating that you are "alone" or "lonely": "allein" and "einsam".
[Being alone with my thoughts feels like...Purple Haze by Kevin Walker]
If you are allein (alone, in English), you are alone but you are happy with it and you are enjoying it, somehow.
If you are einsam (lonely, in English), you are feeling lonely and you are missing someone and/or someone. You are definitely not happy with it.
My mother tongue, Italian, works in another way.
You can use only an adjective for both ideas, "solo", and it is usually negatively connotated.
You can't distinguish between "alone/allein" and "lonely/einsam", generally speaking. You could do it by using "solitario" for expressing something like "alone and happy with it", but then the translation for it would be "solitary" or "loner" in English and "einzeln" or "weltabgeschieden" in German.
And this would be once again an adjective with a somehow sad connotation in Italian.
By reading these lines, it could be easy to guess how important it is for most Italians to be surrounded by other people. A lonely place is a dangerous place and loneliness is a problem, in this cultural frame. And yet, what if a lonely place could be magical and transformative too?
Tags: Loneliness, German language, Italian language, Translation, Self-awareness
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