Mihailo Tolotos began life by killing the only woman he would ever see. 4 hours after his birth in 1856 his mother passed away due to complications with the delivery. Unclaimed by father or family, Tolotos was abandoned where parentless infants of all ages are: the steps of a monastery. He would go on to live a remote life with the monks, atop Mount Athos in Greece, in a monastic community that still exists today and enjoys sovereign status within Greece and the European Union.

Over the course of his lifetime, which ended in 1938, the world below the mountain transformed; war, theological strife, the fallout of the age of enlightenment. For the most part, the monastery remained insulated.

Contact with the outside world was very limited. Technology was incorporated with reticence, if at all. And, of course, women were forbidden.

The article which originally told the world of Tolotos’s story was 3 sentences long, titled “Man, 82, Never Saw Woman.” It is a logical leap: records show that Tolotos never left the monastery, and the only visitors allowed were men seeking a monastic experience, or considering joining the brotherhood permanently.

It wasn’t just women. “Neither had he beheld an automobile, a movie or an airplane.” The emerging wonders of the twentieth century that never made it up the mountain.

There were, however, instances of intrusion. In 1931, when Tolotos would have been in his 70s, a theological controversy drew the archbishop of Voldoga to the monastery. Delivering him was a Russian fleet. The level of the fleet’s technology was unclear. It’s hard to believe they would have all walked up.

More directly relevant is a covert trip made by one Maryse Choisy, a French philosopher, journalist, and woman. Disguised as a sailor, she entered the monastery. This was in the 1920s. Tolotos would have been in his 60s. She would later write about the experience in Un mois chez les Hommes (A Month With the Guys). It was not a protracted stay, and it is not clear if they interacted. Even if they did, Tolotos would have been under the impression that Choisy was a man. Really, by the age of sixty, having never seen a woman, Tolotos may have struggled to recognize even an unconcealed one.

Choisy’s excursion challenges the purity of Mihailo’s isolation. He saw too, in the extrasensory way of an infant, his mother, experienced a glimpse of her final hours, as well as partially sharing in her final nine months. The truth is that all of us (almost) begin life with a woman.

What is still likely true, at least, is that when he died in 1938, at the age of 82, Tolotos did not remember having ever seen a woman.

The sacrifices of a modern luddite often appear severe and absurd. People give up smartphones, television, the convenience of technology, or even the internet entirely. We roll our eyes. We cringe to imagine the difficulty of living that way.

But in the distant hindsight these sacrifices take on a different color. One starts to wonder: was Tolotos happy? Was whatever contentment on the mountaintop lessened or partial compared to someone who had seen a woman (in our case, all of a woman)? 82 years of life and what remains is a testament to discipline, withdrawal, austerity, and faith. What testament does the life of the AR wearing, trend-aware porn addict leave? What imprint has the conscious experience left on them? We all will die. When our moment comes, will we pity Tolotos, or envy him?