Each day as the world spins, the impending epidemic of loneliness festers society. More people are alone now than ever before, even though we have social media at our immediate disposal to remedy. But distracting yourself from being alone is nothing but sloppily patching up a gap in community and relationship, without actually healing it. In her article ‘Loneliness can harm your heart, study finds’, Ashley Welch explains the results found by recent researchers in London, who investigated the effect of loneliness on the human heart (after it has already been proven that it effects your immune system and blood pressure). What they found after extensive research was that people who would qualify as ‘lonely’ were 29 percent more likely to have a heart attack and 32 percent more likely to have a stroke. One of the most common fears in London, the United States and generally all other societies, is being alone. This isn’t very surprising, because when I mention being alone, the word loneliness is hurriedly implied, and that’s what people really fear. It’s understandable, because being alone and not engaged in consistent community or social contact is what causes loneliness to unfold. However I think it’s a little unfair to marry these two concepts as one in the same, because being alone can be as vital to our well-being as the Fitbit is to actually caring about walking. And I’m not here to talk about loneliness, but to divorce these two concepts and focus in on the sheer importance of valuing aloneness in healthy moderation. Yeah, that’s right: being alone is good. The funny thing is, spending some time alone could be the best way to dealing with loneliness itself.

I know this might be a slightly uncomfortable jab into the side of all the extroverts out there (trust me, I’m one too), but consistently setting aside even momentary time for solitude is significant for anyone. Stepping back and spending time reading or working alone leaves room for your mind to breathe for a minute. It exposes yourself, forcing you to get in touch with your inner workings. This enhances your ability to process emotions and situations and brings clarity to the way you understand yourself (which, yes, diminishes feelings of loneliness). Quickly, your quality of life is starkly improved, because being comfortable in a state of self-examination breaks down walls of fear and rescues emotional connection from a pit of uncertainty and mystery. If we spent our days muddled in tasks and busyness, we root our emotional well-being in the minute details and situations we encounter. Today we live in a world where everything is at our disposal to immediately and effectively combat aloneness. Out of fear of being left with nothing but ourselves, we fill in that seemingly empty space with music or Netflix or Instagram. This is why it is also imperative to be comfortable distancing yourself (again, even for a moment, trust me I’m an addict too) from these space-fillers. It’s so that we can embrace the comfort of silence, instead of covering it up and hiding it until we fear it, like some monster waiting behind our closet door.

During a recent backpacking trip, there was one day that my trip leaders set aside for us to practice this discipline of solitude. I spent a total of nine hours alone. I hiked, I read, I climbed a ridge, I wrote and most importantly, I embraced silence. But as I began to embrace silence, I realized how not-so-silent it really was. I listened to the waves beating against the rocks and the sand. I listened to the rustling of the tall brown grass as the mice went about their daily routines. I listened to the faint, airy howl of wind through the tall trees and the static, splashy whistle of the creek. I listened to myself: my thoughts, my feelings, my concerns, my desires. The chatty white noise of my surroundings had a way of singling me out in a refreshing way. As I spent the day keeping myself busy at a gentle pace, time no longer became an object. I didn’t wait out the clock for the next time I got to tell somebody about the sweet trail I found or some sarcastic joke I thought up. In fact, after a long while, I finally decided to go down to the beach and nap for a little while before I got back into reading. Five minutes after lying down on the warm sand, our trip leader woke me up and said the nine hours was up. I couldn’t believe it.

Now you don’t have to be secluded on some ridge in the coastal wilderness for nine hours to experience solitude. All it takes is stepping aside for a moment and looking at your life and yourself from a little higher vantage point (metaphorically). Notice how you respond and react throughout your day. Be mindful of yourself, and take everything in. Practice what I like to call healthy introspection: keeping in check with yourself and being in tune and open to momentary bits and pieces of self-reflection as you go about your day. Don’t shut yourself in a closet and pretend you’re some monster wrapped in an enigmatic shroud. The truth is, we’re really not as mysterious as we seem; we just need to take more time to open the closet doors and look around.