You can be surrounded by people and still quietly lonely, and you can be alone and perfectly at peace. The two get confused, but they are not the same. A lot of women live full, busy, peopled lives and still carry a thin loneliness underneath, the particular kind that comes from rarely being truly attended to, even in a crowd.

This hour is not about fixing loneliness, but it does offer a little of its antidote, undivided, in-person attention, the experience of being fully noticed by someone for a while. It is a simple human thing, and increasingly rare.

Being properly seen, even for an hour, eases something that company alone does not always reach. You do not have to be isolated to feel it, or to want the warmth of being genuinely tended to. Most of us are a little more touched-out and a little lonelier than we admit.

たけと