Solitude

Solitude works best when all reference points of happiness, achievement, sense of security are internal to you, measured from a reference point which does not need comparison with others. That’s possible only when you have either beaten all external benchmarks (too good than the rest) or abandoned comparing (renounced the ways of world). If external benchmarks are still relevant to you then isolation is not solitude, it is loneliness. Need to connect to others for emotional reasons is the key difference between solitude and loneliness. Solitude is for satiated, loneliness is hunger. Enjoying solitude is enjoying freedom from emotional dependence.  Ironically, solitude and loneliness are possible even without isolation, depending on how deeply one understand the world around and looks outward for emotional gratification; more one understands, more one gets detached, leading to attainment of state of solitude. In such situation presence of other humans and their chatter is a mere nuisance, which when, sometimes, becomes unbearable people do move to seclusion to cut it. 

-Pulastya