Choosing time alone is a recharge. Getting cut off from everyone is a different thing. Know the difference.

STILLNESS

WHAT THIS MEANS

Solitude you chose and isolation that happened to you can look identical from outside and feel nothing alike from inside. One ends when you decide it ends; the other has no door you control. Mixing them up is easy, especially if you have been told that needing people is weakness, so weeks of being cut off get relabeled as a preference for your own company. The honest test is whether you could rejoin if you wanted to.

If the answer is no right now, that is not a failure on your part. Reach for one low-stakes contact this week, a message, a class, a shift with people in it.

A QUESTION TO SIT WITH

Did you choose this solitude, or did it happen to you?

MORE IN SOLITUDE & SELF-KNOWLEDGE

Free, with nothing to buy inside it.