The life of a hermit, or any monk or nun for that matter, can be lonely. The call to solitude and silence can be ominous, especially for the novice monastic. At this point in my monastic career, I have become accustomed to solitude and silence, however that does not mean that I do not still get lonely from time to time.
I will admit that it has taken me many, many years to convert my loneliness into holy solitude. This is done through prayer and meditation, as well as talking candidly with my spiritual director about my monastic way of life and the ups and downs it brings into my life.
The Rule of St. Benedict teaches that a monk or nun is always be praying, whether it is during liturgical prayer (such as the Divine Office), manual labor, Lectio Divina (also called Sacred Reading) or while doing a craft such as painting or knitting, prayer is to always be at the heart of what a person is doing.
This teaching has helped me greatly concerning loneliness vs. holy solitude. The more often I pray, the less lonely I am. I believe this is because in prayer, we are joined to the heart of God, which connects us to everything in Creation.
The community to which I belong in dispersed, meaning we live apart from one another. To add to that, there are great distances between us, with some of us in the United States, some in Canada, one in the Dominican Republic and one in Egypt. We don't exactly get to have face-to-face fellowship, so we chat online or over the phone instead.
Even though these channels of communication are always open to us, we don't always use them. I believe this is because of our vocation as hermits is to seek out solitude and silence, rather than chatting just to fill the empty spaces in our day. This is as it should be for hermits.
In closing, I would invite each of you to take 10 minutes out of your day to be completely alone and completely silent. This includes silence from your smartphones and other electronic devices. With practice, you may find that your outlook on life is more tempered and calm.
