Solitude - the ability to "Be" alone...

Blaise Pascal, the seventeenth century philosopher and mathematician left behind a body of observations and insights, which later was collected in a book called "Pensees" ( thoughts, in French). Pascal was more a man of the world than an ascetic in the literary sense. Sometimes, when I read the "Pensees", I find, that it has remarkable similarities with aphorisms in the Bhagavad Gita : Strikingly practical, and oozing with common sense. Not surprising though because Pascal was a trained mathematician of the highest order , hence his thoughts were very precise, incisive and never shies away from the truth.

The reason i am reminded of Pascal now is because of a phone call I received a couple of hours ago from a friend in Atlanta. He said he was going mad , restless ,sitting at home, with all this Ice and snow on the roads making it impossible to venture out or do anything. I sympathized with him, but at the back of my mind a particular observation from Pensees came to my mind..

Pascal writes " All the unhappiness of Man stems from one thing only: that he is incapable of staying quietly in his room.."

How very true!!!! : the constant , inveterate or even compulsive need to keep 'doing' something has become a more or less a genetic disorder. There is always this need to have a motive, a purpose, a goal behind every action. Why should this be so.. ? According to me, The problem is that we are afraid of being alone ; frightened of what we have made ourselves into , that pushes us incessantly into some kind of occupation or other. In quietness and silence, we come face to face with ourselves, and that is not a very pretty thing for most of us to see. The other great tragedy is the fact that we have somehow equated solitude with dullness and inactivity ; and this delusion is costing us a great deal in terms of mental hygiene. "Silence" has also been transformed into a thriving business proposition. Millions throng to religious institutions, meditation gurus, therapeutic doctors ; shelling out huge quantities of money to buy Silence. What a terrible tragedy?

Pascal gently reminds us that we just need to "be" without necessarily "being someone" ; and that is the source of quietness that we so madly crave in our outward activities . It is an inward flowering of one's innermost self. A simple reorientation is all that is required to anchor ourselves in our true home .

Do we have the courage, is the Question ??

God bless....

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