Eating lunch alone doesn’t make you a loner. Sometimes it makes you the only one actually tasting the food.

Being alone and being lonely are different states that look the same from outside. An hour by yourself can be genuine rest, and the interpretation people put on it, including your own, is usually harsher than the hour deserves. If the solitude was not chosen, the plainer truth also stands: that is hard, and finding something good in it does not have to mean pretending it is enough.

Take the hour on its own terms this week. If you wanted company and did not have it, say so to someone rather than solving it alone.