There's Nothing Wrong with Being Alone
Some of us are built that way.
Did you know?
About half of adults in the U.S. would rather give themselves electric shocks than spend fifteen minutes alone thinking.
That's what a team of psychologists at the University of Virginia learned ten years ago. They put people in a room with a little button to push, and half of them got so unbearably bored they pushed it—over and over. That half? They’re the ones who think we’re nuts. Maybe some of them shocked themselves out of curiosity. Sure, but that doesn’t explain why they kept doing it. As the authors concluded after conducting the study, "Most people seem to prefer to be doing something rather than nothing, even if that something is negative."
So:
Most people out there would rather be doing anything other than sitting alone, engaging in some quiet reflection, no matter how much harm it does, even to themselves? That sure sums up humanity now.
Doesn’t it?
It’s like Pascal said: All of our problems stem from our inability to sit quietly alone. He made that observation 400 years ago. I wonder what he would think about the UVA study. I bet he would nod and say…
Yep.