Why We Need Solitude

Posted on 07/15/2019 20:00 PM (Word On Fire Blog Feed) The soul’s at fault, which ne’er escapes itself. —Horace One of the great scourges of our time is preoccupation. Every day, precious time is lost in ruminating about the past or worrying about the future. Our phones buzz with new calls, impatient texts, and pressing alerts about various and sundry facts like how far we’ve walked, the score of the game, and the timing of our next doctor’s appointment. Our schedules are designed to make us masters of efficiency. We pride ourselves on multitasking as we divide our attention between everything while truly attending to nothing. In making everything a priority we have, in effect, made nothing a priority. Eternal moments with God, our family and our friends—the very stuff of eulogy—are lost to meaningless and forgettable distraction. In his masterwork Pensées, Blaise Pascal observed, “All the problems of men arises from one single fact,…