Creating a state of aloneness

A good friend sent this to me:
"Creating a state of aloneness in the besieged everyday may be one of the bravest things individual men and women can do for themselves. Nel Mezzo, in the midst of everything, as Dante said, to be besieged- but beautifully, because we have made a place to stand- in the people and the places and the perplexities we have grown to love, seeing them not now as enemies or forces laying siege, but as for the first time, as participants in the drama, both familiar and strangely surprising. We find that having people knock on our door is as much a privilege as it is a burden; that being seen, being recognized and being wanted by the world and having a place in which to receive everyone and everything, is infinitely preferable to its opposite."

-from "Consolations"
by David Whyte