I think the American writer Edith Wharton was the wisest person ever on loneliness. She believed the cure for it wasn’t always to have company, but to find a way to be happy with your own company. Not to be antisocial, but not to be scared of your own unaccompanied presence. She thought the cure to misery was to ‘decorate one’s inner house so richly that one is content there, glad to welcome anyone who wants to come and stay, but happy all the same when one is inevitably alone’.
