Feeling alone and being alone aren’t the same. God sits in the cafeteria with you either way.

The two things come apart more often than people expect. You can be at a full table and feel entirely unreachable, and you can be by yourself and perfectly all right. Feeling alone is real and it is not a measurement of whether anybody is there. That is worth knowing on the days when the room is busy and you still feel like a spectator in it.

If this week is one of those, tell one person the plain version rather than the managed one. And if sitting somewhere quietly with company is all you can do, that counts.