Henry David Thoreau, philosopher, “in my house I had three chairs, one for solitude, another for friendship, and the third for society.”

A philosopher alone in a cabin in the middle of the forest. Everything else is silence. For decades and decades, Henry David Thoreau has been the canonical example of simple living and meditation. Phrases like the one that heads this article about the chairs that the American thinker had in his country house.

But history has not been exactly like that: Thoreau’s cabin was less than three hundred meters from the train track; He, in fact, went down to the town almost every day and, once, he put almost thirty people in there.

The explanation is simple, of course. Thoreau’s quote (his entire work, in fact) is not about loneliness, nor about self-sufficiency, nor about self-control. The phrase is actually about balance.

What exactly does Thoreau say? The text is in Walden (1854)in the chapter dedicated to visitors. It is also slightly different from the one that usually circulates: he says that he had “one chair for when he is alone, two for when a friend visits him and three for society.”

And it seems like a matter of nuance, it’s true. But it is not. When Thoreau wrote this he was already fed up with being called a ‘hermit’. He says it himself in the book (“I think and love society as much as anyone else”), but above all he shows it. Henry received more visitors during his forest retreat than at any other time in his life.

His experiment in recollection (the two years, two months and two days that it lasted) was a period of self-knowledge, but nothing more. It was Thoreau playing to find out who he wanted to be when he grew up.

And why is all this important? Often, we think that others can help us because they have gone through the same things as us; because they have climbed the same mountain as us. But it’s not true: no one is actually climbing that same mountain.

Others are helpful because, as they climb their own mountains, they have a unique perspective on what lies ahead and what we have left behind.

We live in an epidemic of loneliness. In November 2023, the WHO declared unwanted loneliness a global health threat and set up a commission on the matter, which published its report in 2025. That’s where Thoreau can help us.

Because the lesson of the three chairs is not what they sell us. It’s not “sit in the first chair.” The lesson is to have the three chairs ready: seeking moments of chosen solitude feels good, but imposed and chronic loneliness makes us sick.

So yes, it is worth remembering good old Henry David Thoreau: let’s count the chairs carefully.

Image | Yilei (Jerry) Bao | Abinash Jothimani

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