Allowing distractions is not the way to cope

Johannes Schwarz says Mass in the Syrian desert on his walking pilgrimage to Jerusalem

In our times it's worth examining a statement from an outstanding thinker whose perspective on the human condition benefits from his being removed from the tribulations of this confused era. One highly relevant insight of this kind comes from Blaise Pascal, and it's this:

“All of humanity's problems stem from each person's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” 

The implications of this for us today are central to the human project, says Johannes Schwarz, who has lived largely as a hermit in the Italian Alps for the past eight years. This Catholic priest has launched a series of monthly video accounts of his daily life that include his artistic endeavours as well as the mundane tending his small house and garden, and he is an adept observer of the natural world around his mountain-top vantage-point.

He takes from Pascal the warning that "through the constant pursuit of distractions we are in danger of not knowing ourselves, living life superficially, avoiding the deeper reality, the deeper questions".

Schwarz's reflection on the condition of what is the condition of most people on the planet, given during his January video, starts with Pascal's challenge: 

“All of humanity's problems stem from each person's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” 

This loose quote from Blaise Pascal, the 17th century French thinker, physicist and brilliant mathematician, pops up on social media walls occasionally. It comes from his Pensées (number 139), fragmentary thoughts penned without ever being arranged into the intended larger work.

What Pascal meant was that we seek distractions. These distractions we find necessary, because otherwise the gravity of our situation — “the natural poverty of our feeble and mortal condition”, he calls it — would oppress us too greatly. And thus we flee into the noise and drown out the unpleasant side of reality. Pascal does not write this with scorn. He was understanding. He must have been. His relatively short life was shaped by the Thirty Years' War, one of the longest and most destructive conflicts on the European continent. Distraction was a way to cope. 

So what does he think the problem is? The first, surely, is that through the constant pursuit of distractions we are in danger of not knowing ourselves, living life superficially, avoiding the deeper reality, the deeper questions. And it all gets worse, says Pascal, if we mistake the distractions for sources of true happiness.

We imagine, he says, the possession of the objects of our quests will really make us happy. Yet we eventually attain what we seek and soon find we are still unhappy. The bigger house did not change our internal state. The promotion did not produce lasting contentment. A relationship that promised joy, also comes with demands. We want to be at rest and are ever restless. There is something insatiable in our pursuit. There is something insatiable in the nature of our desire. 

Some see in this nothing but a “drive”, an evolutionary force that once propelled us forward —  whatever “forward” is supposed to mean in a blind, meaningless cosmos. It holds, now that our minds perceive it, only empty promises and despair. Distractions to the rescue.  

Others would say with Pascal that we seek rest as by a “secret instinct, a remnant of the greatness of our original nature, which teaches that happiness in reality consists only in rest, and not in stir.” Augustine a millennium earlier had famously written: “Restless is our heart until it rests in you, O Lord”. Or as Pascal says elsewhere: “What does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there, the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words, by God himself.” (425) Here it is: The famous “God-shaped hole” in man. 

That is why, says Pascal, we have difficulty sitting quietly in a room by ourselves.

But from what has been said it is clear that the point is not that we have to learn to sit quietly. The point is that we should perceive distractions as distractions and not let them overpower the more pertinent questions — questions that we will have to face if happiness and rest are not the ultimate illusion. 

So we are not confined to a room. We do not have to lock ourselves in. In fact, I personally have always found walking to be perfectly ordered to this pursuit. I find pilgrimages a great way to leave distractions and the noise behind. There are stages of such a journey. The first is physical, with pain and strain as the body adjusts. But over time, the physical aspect fades into the background.

Next, the mind begins to wander, thirsting for new impressions, encounters and discoveries. You may spend weeks sorting in your mind experiences and dialogues of the past. But eventually the rhythm of your steps slowly clears the mind. You find yourself getting more and more quiet. And at some point you'll stop talking to yourself and start listening.You'll find yourself "being" — being as you are. Once you've become quiet; once you simply "are", your hiking boots no longer matter. You have started on a journey inward. What will you find? Or whom?

Ω  See also  Priest turns forsaken farm....

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