What would Marcus Aurelius say about loneliness?

You feel deserted because no familiar voice answers your inward call. Yet much of loneliness comes from being a stranger to yourself. A crowded table cannot cure that, nor can a hundred messages. First learn to keep company with your own mind without fleeing at once into distraction. If your thoughts are harsh, instruct them. If they are empty, give them worthy work. Read something sound. Write something true. Walk and observe the common life around you. You are not a severed fragment, but part of one city made of gods and men. This bond is real even when no friend sits beside you. Still, do not turn Stoicism into hiding. Offer kindness, begin the letter, accept the invitation, speak plainly to another soul. Solitude can refine you, but isolation can rot you. Ask whether you have closed the door that you accuse the world of barring.

— Marcus Aurelius