The Sole Cause Of Man’s Unhappiness
"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."
~Blaise Pascal
Reaction to Pascal’s claim:
“Once I read this answer, I felt insulted and then challenged by Pascal. Am I really incapable of the simple deed of staying quietly in my own room? Could I endure my own company alone for one hour, or am I so bored with myself that I have to invent some trouble to divert myself? I resolved to refute Pascal’s implied insult – and failed flat. I went into the smallest and darkest room in my house and turned off the lights. To drown out distracting noise, I turned on an electric fan to make ‘white noise’. I set an alarm clock outside the room for one hour. I then prepared myself to have a good, instructive, happy time meeting myself.
After ten minutes, I checked the alarm and was surprised that the hour had not yet passed.
After another ten minutes, I woke up to find myself asleep.
I deliberately didn’t think about anything outside the room. I didn’t bring in other people or my relationships with them or my work or my plans for the future or my past. For all these things were not really there in that room with me then. Only I was. I thought I should be able to endure my own presence without running away from myself into something external, even relationships, good and important as these are; for I wanted to encounter who it was who had all these relationships. If I can’t meet him, if everything I do is a diversion from the doer, I’m in big trouble.
I think I’m in big trouble.
This was not the end of the story. But I don’t want to tell you what I found next, because I don’t want to preprogram you. You must be free to find whatever is real and true there, in you. But let me reassure you that there can be a light at the end of the tunnel, a floor under the nothingness, a Somebody under all the masks and roles and relationships. I wouldn’t be recommending this experiment to you if there was no good news beyond the bad news. But you must find it for yourself. It’s not easy.”
~Peter Kreeft
~Blaise Pascal
Reaction to Pascal’s claim:
“Once I read this answer, I felt insulted and then challenged by Pascal. Am I really incapable of the simple deed of staying quietly in my own room? Could I endure my own company alone for one hour, or am I so bored with myself that I have to invent some trouble to divert myself? I resolved to refute Pascal’s implied insult – and failed flat. I went into the smallest and darkest room in my house and turned off the lights. To drown out distracting noise, I turned on an electric fan to make ‘white noise’. I set an alarm clock outside the room for one hour. I then prepared myself to have a good, instructive, happy time meeting myself.
After ten minutes, I checked the alarm and was surprised that the hour had not yet passed.
After another ten minutes, I woke up to find myself asleep.
I deliberately didn’t think about anything outside the room. I didn’t bring in other people or my relationships with them or my work or my plans for the future or my past. For all these things were not really there in that room with me then. Only I was. I thought I should be able to endure my own presence without running away from myself into something external, even relationships, good and important as these are; for I wanted to encounter who it was who had all these relationships. If I can’t meet him, if everything I do is a diversion from the doer, I’m in big trouble.
I think I’m in big trouble.
This was not the end of the story. But I don’t want to tell you what I found next, because I don’t want to preprogram you. You must be free to find whatever is real and true there, in you. But let me reassure you that there can be a light at the end of the tunnel, a floor under the nothingness, a Somebody under all the masks and roles and relationships. I wouldn’t be recommending this experiment to you if there was no good news beyond the bad news. But you must find it for yourself. It’s not easy.”
~Peter Kreeft
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