I recently wrote an email to a student that had me thinking about the difference between loneliness and solitude. Both are situations where you are alone, but the critical difference, in my mind, is your mental state and your intention.

In loneliness, we crave interaction with others. We are alone and we don't like it. We feel unsupported, isolated, and unloved. We enter this state from a place of scarcity. Company feels scarce. Friends seem scarce. Connection feels scarce. Loneliness is no fun, and it's easy to revel in our own dissatisfaction.

Solitude, on the other hand, is totally different. It's a conscious choice to remove ourselves from the hustle and bustle of life. We seek to live more slowly and engage in deep inner work.

As a guy who admittedly spends way too much time in his own head, I find that I crave solitude. I rarely feel lonely anymore, and I actively seek time by myself. As a teacher this is ironic, but after a day of interacting with well over a hundred teens and colleagues, I'm desperate for a reprieve. As I've gotten older and accepted that I spend a lot of time in my head, I've increasingly learned to make my head a " fun" place to hang out. In other words, I've come to really enjoy my own company and thoughts. This is no simple or easy process. Our minds are often mistaken, irrational, and potentially harmful. But if we cultivate a deep interior life -- if we've come to terms with who we are and what we value -- then spending time in solitude feels like a breath of fresh air.

I often use the analogy of a dog. All day long, we are "on-leash." There are obligations and expectations and social norms. But once we enter into a state of solitude, we get to let our minds "off-leash." We get to wander around and explore interesting things. There's something to be said for cultivating a deep interior life so that, when you are "off-leash," you have a lot of fun.

Thomas Merton is one of my personal heroes. He passed away a while ago, but he was a Catholic monk who lived in the US during the twentieth century. He was acquaintances with Martin Luther King Jr. Here's a great quote by him:

"The world of men has forgotten the joys of silence, the peace of solitude, which is necessary, to some extent, for the fullness of human living. Man cannot be happy for long unless he is in contact with the springs of spiritual life which are hidden in the depths of his own soul. If man is exiled constantly from his own home, locked out of his spiritual solitude, he ceases to be a true person."

If you find yourself alone this summer, consider spending time in solitude, not loneliness.