Merton writes that solitude is not “something outside you, not an absence of men or of sound around you; it is an abyss opening up in the center of your soul.”

An abyss you welcome and go to every once in a while. To recharge, to be whole again.

Every person needs to learn from childhood how to spend time with oneself. That doesn’t mean he should be lonely, but that he shouldn’t grow bored with himself because people who grow bored in their own company seem to me in danger, from a self-esteem point of view.