Do you agree or disagree with the following statement The best way to truly relax and reduce stress is to spend time alone Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer

In this day and age, there comes a contention on whether it is to spend time alone or with others to truly relax and reduce stress. Some people may hold the view that the best way for relaxation is to spend time alone. At first glimpse, this perspective may hold water to some extent. Nevertheless, I will argue that spending time alone is surely not the best way to truly relax and reduce stress. For me, I prefer to spend time with others to reduce stress and my reasons are boiled down as follows.

First and foremost, I believe that meeting with friends is much more effective than spending time alone to relax and reduce stress. I have to admit that my viewpoint is profoundly influenced by my personal experience. I remember that when I was in university, I suffered great pressure during one of the semesters. During that semester, I failed in one of my courses since I missed several classes due to my sickness in the term. Therefore, when I was in the summer vacation, I became so stressful about the coming semester that I found it even hard for me to go to sleep normally as I used to do. In order to reduce stress during the break and face the coming semester with a refreshed mind, I decided to went out traveling with a couple of best friends instead of spending time alone at home. As a result, I rather enjoyed myself during the vacation when we simply discussed about the beautiful scenery, recalled the time we shared with each other during high school and the experience helped me pass the most difficult time as I stopped becoming anxious about the unknown future and rather felt certain about the love and friendship I had. After the vacation, I gradually gained confidence in myself and started to make preparations and plans for the coming semester. As a result, I did a quite good job in the next term and I believed that I probably wouldn't achieve such result without that experience with my friends. Since then, I believed that, when facing stress and trouble, it is better to spend time with friends since it will surely make you more confident about your current situation and less anxious about the uncertain future.

Moreover, from my perspective, spending time alone will only worsen the situation since we are not able to express our concerns and worries to others. People may have stress for various kinds of reasons, including their career, study, health and so on. However the reasons can be, it is important for people to simply speak out their worries and concerns to others to reduce stress. Let us imagine what will be like if we are in a completely deep mood and decide to stay alone for a week. It will be common for most of us to be somewhat trapped in the stress and keep thinking and worrying about how to solve the problem. However, if we are able to talk to somebody about our concerns, even to strangers, it will provide us with an opportunity to find out the reasons that are troubling us the most and will possible give us a different perspective to face the problem. After all, as the person involved most in the trouble, we may simply become too concerned about the problem that we can't find the solution to solve it. However, for outsiders standing from a more objective position, it may become much easier for them to judge what we should do and to solve our stress the most effectively. Therefore, expressing our concerns and worries to others is not only helpful for us to identify what is troubling us currently, but may also provide us with some possible solutions to the situation that we can benefit from.

Finally, practically speaking, in this day and age, it is becoming increasingly difficult for people to spend time alone completely. After all, however much we may wish to be isolated from the world outside, we all have to return to the society one day. In this way, if we choose to spend time alone initially to reduce stress, it may also be difficult for us to step back to the socially-connected world eventually, which will probably increase our concerns and stress. Therefore, I believe it will beneficial to spend time with others at first to solve the problem since this is the inevitable future.

In light of the reasons and examples mentioned above, I strongly believe that it is not the best way to truly relax and reduce stress by spending time alone. Alternatively, I suggest people spend time with others, especially their friends, to help us overcome the obstacles in our life.