Is it hard to be alone with your thoughts? French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote that ”All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.” That seems like an exaggeration, but there’s recent research confirming the idea that we have a hard time sitting by ourselves with nothing but our brains to entertain us.
A team of researchers led by University of Virginia psychologist Timothy Wilson had research participants sit alone in a room for anywhere from 6 to 15 minutes. As reported in The Atlantic, over the course of 6 studies, 58% of the participants rated the difficulty of the task above the midpoint on a numerical scale, and 42% rated their level enjoyment below the midpoint.
That still means that a substantial number of participants ranked their enjoyment at or above the midpoint. Nonetheless, there is additional evidence that many people found the task unpleasant. Participants rated activities such as reading magazines or doing crossword puzzles far preferable to sitting with their thoughts. When participants were assigned to do the task at home, 32% admitted to cheating. And, amazingly, some participants preferred electric shock to their thoughts.
In the study involving shock, participants were hooked up to a generator and gave themselves a jolt of current before having to sit alone with their thoughts. Taking only the data from those participants who said they would be willing to pay money to not experience the shock again (thus presumably culling out the stray masochist from the sample), a quarter of the women and two-thirds of the men gave themselves at least one shock during the period of time when they were alone with nothing to do but think.
Is the inability to sit quietly and reflect just a problem for Instagraming, Tweeting, Facebooking Millennials? No: enjoyment of the task was unrelated to either age or social media use. Perhaps our discomfort with such stillness is a modern phenomenon, but, if so, it seems that it is a feature of Modernism in the broad sense, going back at least to the 17th century, when Pascal penned the above comment.
“Be still, and know that I am God” the psalmist wrote (Psalm 46, NIV), suggesting that stillness is intimately associated with knowledge of God. Many of us desire to know God, but, if we are infected with the restlessness of the age, we may have difficulty sitting quietly enough to sense God’s presence. Perhaps, if we could make it our habit to sit and enter our interior space, we would find that we would plumb not just our own depths, but the heart of the ever-holy, ever-faithful, ever-loving One. We would then sense a power that electric current can’t hope to emulate!
September 15, 2014 at 3:32 pm
Interesting. I’m an introvert, but my current life situation means I’m seldom alone. I’m doing the sandwich generation thing. What with teenagers in the house, trying help my mom, and a job that has a large customer service component, 15 minutes alone with nothing to do sounds like heaven to me. Maybe it’s relative to your life circumstances.
September 15, 2014 at 3:50 pm
Good point. It definitely wasn’t !00% that found it difficult or unpleasant to spend the time alone. Probably among those who liked it were people like you who don’t have enough alone time and welcome the little bit they can manage.
September 16, 2014 at 3:24 am
That is very interesting. And puzzling to me. Even as a little kid, I loved being alone with just my thoughts. Even more so now. Being with others is fine, but I renew and refresh when I am alone.
September 16, 2014 at 12:43 pm
I agree. There were apparently some study participants who felt the same way, but it’s surprising how many didn’t like being alone with their thoughts. Thanks for your comment.