Finding stillness in a world of perpetual motion

Why we tilt at windmills, and why we need habits of solitude to be happy, according to Blaise Pascal

Aug 19, 2022

Gracious reader,

Blaise Pascal (June 19, 1623 - August 19, 1662) one of the most insightful thinkers in history, died on this day 360 years ago. See the above video for an overview of his life and thought at his home in Paris.

One of Pascal’s most prescient ideas into the perils of modern human life pertained to the concept of diversion.

What is diversion?

Pascal wrote at the dawn of the European enlightenment, and he was categorically skeptical of the Enlightenment project’s unalloyed faith in technology and progress. He thought diversion was a worthwhile concern when he wrote three centuries ago, and his insights have only become more true for our current era.

Diversion is the defining malaise of modern life.

It’s why we never seem to have enough time for the things that matter to us. It’s why, even while writing this reflection, I was bombarded by emails, calls, and texts that drew me away from completing a thought or sentence, causing me to take twice as long to finish this as it should have.

We’ve explored the concept of schole in past CR issues. Schole, the root of our English word “school,” was the concept of leisure in ancient Greek culture that permitted the proliferation of arts, culture, and creativity, particularly in Athens. But schole was premised on a society built on slavery..

Today, the moral evil of slavery is juxtaposed against the concepts of basic human dignity and equality. Modern man has the miracle of technology, which helps people at all social and economic levels of society enjoy more free time than ever before in history.

And, yet, where does all that free time go?

There’s never enough.

Pascal has an answer.

Pascal said that we intentionally make our lives more complex than necessary to avoid sitting with the discomfort of solitude. We’re revolted by our human condition. So we find every excuse not to just be with it.

“If our condition were truly happy, we should not need to divert ourselves from thinking about it,” Pascal writes in his Pensees.

We think that, in avoiding solitude and reflection on the the frailty of the human condition, we will be happy, but, in fact, diversion from the discomfort of our condition only makes us unhappier.

“I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room,” Pascal writes.

We think distraction is the solution to our painful condition, but, in fact, distraction exacerbates our pain.

How do we distract ourselves?

We tilt at windmills.

We pick fights with thunderstorms.

We manufacture affront, create offense and drama, and make more problems for ourselves in general.

These and other diverting activities only make us more unhappy than we were to begin with.

We like to have things to complain about. We like to decry that there’s never enough time for the things that matter. Being busy and distracted affirms in our mind the perception of our own importance.

Pascal gives the example of a gambler. If you take the game away and give a gambler only his day’s winnings, he’d be unhappy. Take the winnings away, but let him have the game, and he’d be unhappy again. He needs it all — the game, the stakes, and the winnings — for the diversion to be complete.

“What people want is not the easy, peaceful life that allows us to think of our unhappy condition — not the dangers of war, not the burdens of office, but the agitation that takes our mind off it and diverts us,” Pascal observes.

He continues, “We prefer the hunt to the capture.”

We run from the quiet, and yet, we need stillness to survive and thrive as human beings.

We’ve reflected here at CR before about why we are uncomfortable with negative emotions. We need to sit with the rawness of life in order to fully enjoy its richness.

Pascal says that even a person grieving the loss of a child will distract himself with a million small battles in order to not think of his grief.

In order to overcome the plague of diversion, which stops us from leading full lives, we need to form and nurture rituals of stillness.

Habits of stillness

Here are my habits of stillness, some of which may be impractical for your life and circumstance but others of which you may find helpful.

Get to bed early. My ideal morning starts the night before with an early bedtime. Getting to sleep at a reasonable hour — for me, that’s between 9 and 10 p.m. — is a foundational step for the next indispensable habit of stillnes
Get up early. I need at least an hour before my children get up and my day begins, in order to start my day well. Ideally, I’ll rise between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. to do a deep-breathing ritual, journal, pray, and read quietly. These precious, sacred hours are when some of my best soul work gets done.
Journal. I like to start my day pouring out all anxieties, negativity, or worries onto the page. I like to get worries out of my head, where they tend to metastasize, and onto the page, where they lose their power and where I can think more objectively about them.
Affirm. Build up your mind and soul with soothing thoughts, words, and ideas. Once I get the negativity in my subconscious out, I like to replenish my heart and mind with truth. Creative and life affirmations remind me of who I am and what I stand for. Once I pour out the criticism I received and was hurt by the previous day, I remind myself that, for example, “my work heals myself and others.” I remind myself of the core ethics and principles that I strive to live up to. I remind myself that those principles are still worthwhile even if I fell short of them the day before. I fill up my soul with words of beauty, goodness, and truth.
Don’t touch your phone first thing in the morning. I love at least several hours of journaling, writing, prayer, reading, and even work before I allow the demands of the world to intrude on my psyche. Reaching for my phone first thing in the morning — checking email, social media, and text messages — is a recipe for starting my day in a reactive mode. I find myself less able to focus and complete tasks on days that begin phone first. I also find I’m less patient with my children and others, and less resilient to endure the slings and arrows of the day. Instead, my day starts with stillness, quiet.
Retreat and disconnect once a quarter. Once every three months, or as needed in busier seasons of life, I go on retreat. This is a period of 24 to 48 hours of digital disconnection and withdrawal from the world. This is not a time for work, but for deep reflection, soul care, prayer, and healing. I can’t express how healing these times of retreat are. The soul repairs itself when disconnected from the world. As a Christian, I find that these times of gazing intentionally at God and the divine and sublime cause my attachments to the world to dissolve. I feel lighter, more free, and more joyful. I take long walks in nature. I gaze for hours at the stars. I sing. I embrace these and other opportunities to “un-self,” a concept we explored in our last CR issue. There’s a retreat center I like to frequent for these purposes, but retreat can be accomplished anywhere that is out of your ordinary routine. You could, theoretically, do a retreat from the comfort of your own home. But going somewhere new — with the dedicated intent of retreat— helps us resist the temptation to fall into our regular, daily routines of business. This break from the demands of the day-to-day is an essential part of my creative, physical, and spiritual health,
Rinse and repeat. Once I re-emerge back into the world after a time of retreat, I strive to keep the spirit of retreat that retreat offers through the aforementioned practices.

I can say from personal experience that Pascal was right about distraction. But, even though I know beyond doubt that practicing these habits of stillness will make for a better day and quality of life, I resist them. I find it incredibly difficult to get to bed at a reasonable hour. There’s so much to do, and, even once I’m in bed, my mind races through all that is left to be done, often making sleep elusive.

I always regret not making it to bed earlier when the alarm goes off at 5 or 6 a.m. And then, when I get up to turn my alarm off, it’s difficult to resist the allure of the day: I must resist the siren song of checking my email and social media accounts. I know that if I do that before I find stillness, my day will be lesser for it. Despite the fact that I know this, I still often do it, anyway. And I suffer for it.

And then, once I sit to journal, I’m sometimes persuaded — by the call of a million things I remember I have to do — to stop journaling prematurely, before I’ve finished a complete thread of thought, and start my day.

I’ve adapted to this and created a separate page for my miscellaneous thoughts and to lists, so that I can get these things out of my head and continue thinking and journaling. This also helps me, after I’ve journaled, begin my day with a definite list of tasks and priorities.

Our instinct is to recoup and resist true reflection and quiet. It’s unsettling to be alone with our own thoughts. We’re afraid of what we might find, and that we won’t like what we see.

If you have tried any habits of stillness, either the ones I mentioned, or others, you’ll find Pascal to be right, too. You’ll find how difficult it is to sit in solitude and stillness.

Life is busy. We’re constantly bombarded with demands on our time and attention. Because no one is going to do it for us, we have to be the ones to preserve our time and mental consciousness for the things that matter, and resist the temptation to fall into the trap of business that Pascal warns about.

We need stillness and solitude to become fully ourselves, and it’s only after we become fully ourselves that we can have authentic, rich relationships with others.

Our propensity to embrace diversion is the enemy of cultivating ourselves and achieving our creative and human potential. Finding stillness is the secret to becoming fully human and growing into our best selves, in our world of perpetual motion.

I’ve shared with you a few practices that have helped me find stillness in our harried world.

What are yours?

Do you agree with Pascal that diversion is a protective mechanism that works against confronting the frailty of our souls and the ugliness of the human condition? Why or why not?

What are your biggest barriers to mental and spiritual tranquility?

I’d love to hear from you.

Write to me at ah@alexandraohudson.com

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