The moment our plane touches down in San Juan, I join the other passengers in the ritual

of cheering and applauding. Everyone is always happy to land in Puerto Rico.

I'm happy to be here, too.

My first semester of graduate school has been intensely lonely.

I chose to stay at the same school where I went to college,

but all my friends have moved away.

So I packed paper and envelopes and stamps with me on this trip

so that I can stay in touch with friends who are now scattered all over the country.

It's 1998. There's no Wi-Fi, or emails, or text messages.

Normally I come to Monkey Island on Thanksgiving,

but this year, I've got a lot of dissertation research to do,

which means I'm here over the winter holidays too.

For long parts of the day, I'm literally the only human being,

on a huge island with a thousand monkeys.

This kind of solitude is of a different nature entirely

than anything I've experienced in my life. The presence of all these other beings makes me feel alone, but also connected all at once.

Laurie Santos is a professor of psychology at Yale University and host of the Happiness Lab podcast.

Her science of well-being course became the most popular in Yale's history.

More than three million people have taken the online version.

In today's meditative story, Laurie journeys to a remote island, where she spends time as one of only a few humans among thousands of monkeys.

Let her story transport you into this world, where being in the company of non-humans helps us better understand ourselves.

Laurie asked me to clarify that some of the scientific practices described in her story

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