What is it like not to use any mood-altering things? What happens? No excess sugar, no excess alcohol, no drugs, no porn, no gambling, no overeating, no excessive screen time, no addiction to fiction.
What about processing addictions; people, love and relationships, exercise, work, busyness. The ones that are encouraged.
What about sitting with a feeling or a number of feelings throughout the day. What about sitting with anger, upset, sadness, despair, despondency. What happens?
Can you do it? For one day. I met a friend for lunch today who had taken up vaping again. He explained he had been eating so much when he stopped vaping that he had to start again. He said he was feeling much better. That he needed something.
"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone," wrote the French philosopher Blaise Pascal.
It is a bit boring though isn’t it? In our hyped up, informational overloaded society. (Whoops here is some more fodder for it). Why would I want to sit in a room quietly on my own? There is no gratification there. But what happens?
Is that what monks get? Can I be a monk in Clapham? But also submerge myself in the material world when I want? I’ve got bills to pay.
Perhaps there is a middle ground. Some time spent in the room quietly alone and some spent in the world. Is this the way to the most powerful of all emotional states, the most fierce, that of peace.
