“I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.”
— Albert Einstein, Essays in Humanism
There was a stretch of time in my late twenties when being alone felt like a verdict. Eating dinner by myself, going to a movie solo, a Saturday with no plans — all of it carried a low hum of embarrassment, like evidence of something I was failing at.
Somewhere in my early thirties that flipped. I started actually looking forward to the solo dinners, the quiet Saturdays, the long walks with just my own thoughts for company. I booked a solo weekend trip to the coast last spring and spent most of it reading on the porch and going to bed early, and it was, without exaggeration, one of the better weekends I’d had in years.
Solitude stops feeling like loneliness when you finally become someone you don’t mind spending time with.