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| Source: wikipedia.org |
"The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room." - Blaise Pascal Recently, we chanted an Akathist Hymn to "Jesus - Light to Those in Darkness." It was written by Fr. Lawrence Farley. There is a great deal of theological/spiritual reflection found in any given Akathist Hymn, but this passage from Ikos Six caught my attention: The joy of Paschal processions around the House of God remains a distant memory, O Lord, and my soul is in despair ... Yet, even if does quickly recede, the Ikos seems far too dramatic in its claim that our "soul is in despair..." We have developed great tools of adaptation to our environment to avoid something so calamitous as a "soul in despair." And one of those tools is simply a capacity and a desire to be constantly distracted. One event (Pascha?) - no matter how significant - is replaced by another event before the first event is fully absorbed, or so it seems. An unexpressed question is often: What's next? I would like to bring up the whole issue of how distraction relieves us of any such deeper and mindful reflection. To do so, I am turning to a book that I am currently reading, a kind of intellectual biography of the great French mathematician and religious philosopher, Blaise Pascal, author of the well-known Pensees. The author of his biography - Graham Tomlin - clearly an "expert" on Pascal, even entitled Ch. 11, "Distracting Ourselves to Death." As a seventeenth century philosopher, a time that what we call the "modern world" was coming into existence, Pascal had a great deal of insight into the "human condition," and he already knew how we avoid the deeper dimensions of life through the enticements of distraction. Graham Tomlin, who subtitled his book "The Man Who Made the Modern World," begins with an opening paragraph that updates Pascal's thoughts on distraction by giving the topic a contemporary ring: "We live in an age of distraction. The gadgets in our pockets offer us ceaseless entertainment and instant gratification. At any moment when the slightest shadow of boredom flits across our minds, or when we feel slightly awkward in public, we can whip out our phones, trawl through social media posts, watch an endless stream of videos featuring all kinds of trivia or catch up on events that may be happening anywhere around the world. Even when we might decide to put aside our phones, there is the TV, radio, the internet, podcasts, a constant stream of messages and news about sport, politics or culture to fill every silent moment and to make sure that we are never left to the devices and desires or our hearts." (p. 245) Ah, our iPhones! They may just be best described by the terms St. John Klimakos used to capture our relationship to our own human body: friend and enemy. Or, is that "frenemy?" So, we are caught up in this need to be distracted, but the short term effect of being entertained has its own steep price to pay. As Pascal himself writes: "The only thing that consoles us for our miseries is diversion. And yet it is the greatest of our miseries. For it is above all which prevents us thinking about ourselves and leads us imperceptibly to destruction. Diversion passes our time and brings us imperceptibly to our death." Perhaps a bit "heavy" for an early morning meditation. Yet, if Pascal's thoughts have the ring of truth to them; if, indeed, we are "distracting ourselves to death," then maybe our "soul is in despair," without our even knowing it! We will close with a well-known statement of Pascal's that can redirect us away to some extent from the distractions that have such a hold on our minds, hearts and souls: "The immortality of the soul is something of such importance to us, affecting us so deeply, that one must have lost all feeling not to care about knowing the facts of the matter." Certainly, as the Lord said: There is one thing needful! |
