There wasn’t a soul on the Paseo del Salón at that early hour. Just one silhouette of a person sitting in the mist, looking a like some kind of phantasmagorical apparition. I wondered what this woman was doing sitting there all alone, on a stone bench, in the cold, looking out across the rooftops of houses that were barely visible through the mist. Isolation is one of the worst things that can happen to a human being. It ends up consuming the essence of what you are little by little until you’re unrecognizable to both yourself and others. A healthy dose of your own company, on the other hand, helps you to establish a balance between being yourself and being with others. Enforced loneliness is not a good option. It’s far better to decide to seek some time to yourself because your own company is often exactly what you need to move forward.