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To live alone, one must be either a beast or a god, says Aristotle,

leaving out the third case. One must be both. According to a 2010 study published in the journal

Plaus Medicine, the health risks of chronic loneliness are equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. To mitigate

the harms of loneliness, we can increase our social connectedness, but we can also improve

our capacity to be alone. For not all who are alone, are lonely. Regarding his extended time

spent alone at Walden Pond, the philosopher Henry David

Thorough proclaimed, I am never lonely here. I never found the companion that was so companionable

as solitude. In this video, we explore the virtues of solitude and examine why, far from being

damaging to health, solitude promotes

self-development, creates conditions of unparalleled freedom, cures many mental health problems,

and is necessary for the cultivation of a great character.

Loneliness is one thing, solitude, another. You have learned that, now, wrote Nietzsche and thus spoke Zarathustra.

In his book Solitude, a philosophical encounter, the philosopher Philip Caugh defines solitude as,

a stretch of experience disengaged from other people in perception, thought, emotion, and action.

Solitude is simply an experiential world in which other people are absent. That is enough for solitude.

That is constant through all solitudes. Many of the towering figures of history ascended to

their legendary status by harnessing the benefits

found in long stretches of solitude. The 40 days and nights Jesus spent wrestling with the devil

in the desert spurred him to his spiritual heights. Lao Tzu, Buddha, and Moses found in solitude

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