A Private Study

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.—Blaise Pascal

This is a curious statement. If true, one would think that all that was required of a person who was seeking happiness was to retire to his or her study and close the door.

But Pascal knew better:

Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest, without passions, without occupation, without diversion, without effort. Then he feels his nullity, loneliness, inadequacy, dependence, helplessness, emptiness.

He also knew that adolescent youth, in particular, have little interest in contemplation:

Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself. So who does not see it, apart from young people whose lives are all noise, diversions, and thoughts for the future?

But take away their diversion and you will see them bored to extinction. Then they feel their nullity without recognizing it, for nothing could be more wretched than to be intolerably depressed as soon as one is reduced to introspection with no means of diversion.

Pascal's insight is a window into our insane and absurd society. The frenetic hustling, the hedonistic pursuit of pleasure, the mass spectacle, and the limitless diversions and distractions suggest that all men and women are desperately seeking to escape the existential vacuum within by filling their lives with noise and empty amusements.

Perhaps it is true as Eric Hoffer wrote in The True Believer that "we can never have enough of that which we really do not want, and that we run fastest and farthest when we run from ourselves."

Of course, if we run, our prison runs with us.

If I had any recommendation for someone tired of the "endless treadmill," I would recommend that he follow Henry David Thoreau's advice and "Explore thyself."

So enter your study and close the door and invite the Truth back into your life.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.—Matthew 6:6