Quiet: solitude is not the same as loneliness

A woman sitting alone in her house on a Tuesday afternoon may be having one of the better hours of her week, or one of the worst. From the doorway they look the same.

The difference is not the situation, it is whether she chose it. Solitude is being alone and content with it. Loneliness is being alone and aching for something else, and it can happen in a crowded room.

A great deal of advice about later life is really advice to be busier, on the assumption that any time alone is a problem to be filled. For some people that is exhausting rather than helpful.

Quieter people are not failing at sociability. They may need less company and more depth in it, and pushing them into a crowded hall is not kindness.

Reflection, reading, prayer, music, sitting with your own thoughts, doing something slowly because nobody is waiting. These are not gaps between the real activities. For many people they are where the meaning is.

Later life often offers more of this than any earlier stage did, which is worth treating as a gain rather than as empty time.

The honest test is how you feel afterwards. Solitude restores you and you return to people gladly. Loneliness leaves you emptier than it found you, and the emptiness does not lift when the phone eventually rings.

If it is the second, that is worth acting on rather than waiting out, and it is a health matter rather than a private embarrassment.