PERENNIAL 3
On Sitting Quietly
Blaise Pascal
In this reflection, we turn to the philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) for wisdom. What initially comes to mind when you think of sitting quietly in a room alone?
Pascal writes that the inability to sit quietly alone in a room is the source of all humanity’s problems: of boredom and anxiety as defining traits of the human condition; of the machinelike power of habit and the gnawing noise of human pride. But most of all, it is Pascal’s thought that the human being is a reed, “the weakest of nature,” that each of us can be wiped away by a vapor — or an airborne droplet — that grips me.
Pascal reminds us. We are weak, fragile, vulnerable, dependent creatures. But — and this is the refreshing twist — our wretchedness is our greatness. The universe can crush us; a virus can destroy us. But the universe knows none of this, and the virus does not care. We, by contrast, know that we are mortal. Our dignity consists in this thought. “Let us strive,” Pascal says, “to think well.”
