“All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.” –Blaise Pascal

We live in days where we are constantly surrounded by noise: the demands of family, friends, or roommates; television commercials; or the sound of music as a background to anything we do whether we are at the gym, are completing work, or even going to sleep.

Fewer things are more abominable to us than having nothing to do on a Friday night or Saturday.  All this shows how we want to be around noise.  In fact, not being around noise is a scary thing for us.  Just watch any person who seems to be waiting for someone to come or something to happen; he or she immediately goes to his or her cell phone and checks status updates or goes straight to a game on the phone.  This is a type of mental noise.

This is because, sometimes, silence is deafening.  Silence is deafening because our thoughts begin working and processing our lives in silence.  We often do not want to hear these thoughts in the silence, but this is where stillness comes in (stillness is the older way of referring to having a state of silence).

The quote above from Blaise Pascal, who was not only a scientist, but a philosopher and a theologian too, grasps the origin of a multitude of problems, which is the fact we do not have the ability to be silent, or have stillness.

Stillness helps us solve many problems.  Still water reflects a clear image, but stirred up water cannot.  In the same way, when we are still, we have clarity, but when we are stirred up, we do not have clarity.

Below are three ways of practicing stillness and benefitting from it:

1. Find a quiet place

This quiet place is usually not your home.  Go to a park that is not crowded or a hill nearby, and sit and meditate (think).  I remember the day before I began my final phase of my education, I was so anxious that I got up and left the house, and I went to a park nearby, which was almost empty, and I sat for a couple of hours during the late afternoon and thought about everything that led up to this point, and now I could finally see the outcome of all my effort and hard work.  I knew this last phase was going to be hard because it was accompanied by on-the-job training and regular evaluation in addition to the demands of coursework.  It was hard, but if it was not for those few hours of stillness that day, I do not think I would have succeeded.

2. Let your thoughts loose

The next step is to let your thoughts loose.  Your thoughts are fighting to come out, so let them.  Then respond to them and knock down any thought that is unreasonable, and then solve the reasonable problems your thoughts pose.  Afterward, you will notice that your thoughts go quiet and you finally realize the grandeur and glory of the world around you.  This is a way of your body and mind telling you how to better appreciate the world God created and meant for you to behold and to enjoy.  This is because problems are miseries, but once you solve them, there are no more miseries, and all that is left is the glory of God’s creation.

Although I do not accept the idea of portraying God in media, there is a scene in the movie Evan Almighty, which illustrates stillness and its effects.  In this scene, the main character stands with God, and God shows him a place, and he asks God something like “What is this place?”  And God replies back to him and tells him it is where he lives.  Only after being still does he recognize what was around him all along.  The character begins to have appreciation for the grandeur and glory of the world around him.

It is this step that is so crucial when it comes to stillness.  We often get lost with the cares of family and the world, so we work harder and longer, and are all over the place meeting their demands out of real love, but when we do not have the ability to sit in stillness, then those we truly care about and for whom we were all over the place suffer because of us.  An hour or so of stillness a week will go a long way to helping you solve your problems and helping those around you.

3. Recharge and continue toward your goals

After you have found your place where you can be still, and you have listened to your thoughts and have responded to them and thought about how to solve the problems they pose, make some notes about them.  Think about the steps that came to mind to help you solve your problems.  Also record the grandeur and glory of the things around you that you recognized, and the consolation you have received from this glory.  This will help you recharge and continue toward your goals.  We are like machines that run on batteries; we also need times to recharge.

Do you have a place where you can go to be still?  Where is it?  Have you benefitted from practicing stillness?