Why We Can’t Sit Still

“Be still, and know that I am God.” — Psalm 46:10 (KJV)

Try this. Sit in a room with no phone, no music, no book and nobody to talk to, and do nothing for ten minutes. Most people find it surprisingly hard. After a minute or two you start to fidget. Your hand reaches for your pocket.

Pascal noticed this long before anyone had a phone. He looked at all the things people do, wars, games, parties, careers, risky adventures, and came to a startling conclusion:

“I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.”

Why can’t we? Pascal says that when we are completely still, with nothing to distract us, we start to think about our lives: that we are weak, that we will one day die, that we are not in control. And that feels unbearable. So we fill every gap with noise.

“Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness.”

Pascal’s word for all the things we use to avoid thinking is “diversion”. In his day it meant hunting, card games, dancing and court gossip. In ours it might mean endless scrolling, gaming, streaming one more episode, or having something playing in our ears every waking moment.

He makes a funny point about hunting. A man will spend a whole day chasing a hare that he would not even want if you offered it to him as a gift. It is not the hare he wants; it is the chase. We like the chase better than the catch, because the chase keeps us from thinking. Pascal even says that kings, who have everything, need people around them all day whose only job is to keep them amused, because a king who has time to think about himself is unhappy.

Pascal is not saying games or films are wicked. He is asking an honest question: why do I need them so much? What am I running from?

His answer is that there is an emptiness in us that we are trying not to feel. Distraction does not fill it. It only stops us noticing it for a while. The Bible’s answer is not more noise but a different kind of stillness: “Be still, and know that I am God.” Being still before God is not empty. It is where the emptiness can actually start to be filled.

If the quiet makes you feel more than just bored, if sadness or worry floods in whenever things go still and won’t lift, that matters. Please talk to a parent, a youth leader, a school counsellor or a doctor. You don’t have to handle it alone.

One thing to do this week: once a day this week, spend five minutes with no phone or screen nearby. Sit still, read one verse of a psalm, and tell God honestly what comes into your mind. Notice how it feels at the start of the week and at the end.