Sitting In the Stillness
Passive busyness does not equal stillness.
I caught a clip on TikTok of an “old” television show that aired in the United Kingdom in 2004 called Shattered. They took a guy, put him in a literal white padded room with no distractions for 7 days. He didn’t have a clock, the lights were on 24 hours a day, and because they fed him at random times, he lost his sense of time. By day 2, he was starting to go a little loopy.
They had doctors and psychologists monitoring him. His behavior was considered inevitable. Isolation was the problem in their minds. But is that true?
What if we took that same room and put somebody in it who could meditate for 20 hours or more a day or was simply comfortable sitting with themselves for long periods of time?
Would that change the outcome?
Why would it change the outcome? What’s the difference?
As a society we have lost the ability to sit with ourselves without distraction. We are addicted to distraction.
What is distraction?
Anything we enjoy enough that it will keep our brain occupied.
Our definition of stillness is binge watching Netflix. That’s not stillness. It’s just passive busyness. It’s busyness that doesn’t require physical motion but still keeps the brain occupied. Passive busyness does not equal stillness.
I remember when I first started healing myself, I had to learn to sit with myself too. I had to learn to stare at the wall and do absolutely nothing. No distractions. Like so many others, I was one of those people that couldn’t sit on the couch distraction free for 20 seconds without losing my mind. It was something I had to train myself to do. It’s a skill we desperately need that has been forgotten.
We like to blame screens, technology, or television for the problem, especially in children. But the reality is, most adults that grew up before Google and Facebook can’t sit with themselves either. Adults can’t teach their kids skills they don’t have.
We want kids to go to school and sit calmly without those distractions for long periods of time, but we don’t teach them to do that at home. It’s not the screen that’s the problem. You never taught your kid to sit still without it. Why didn’t you teach your kid to sit still without distraction? Because you can’t do it.
I’m not suggesting that we force 3-year olds to sit still for 10-hours at a time. What would age appropriate stillness look like? Age appropriate stillness for a 3-year old might be 1 to 2 minutes of doing nothing. That one to two minutes is more than most adults are capable of right now. We just disguise our fidgeting as productivity. We’ve normalized adult-level distraction so completely that we don't even notice it anymore—it just looks like a full calendar, a clean house, or binge watching Netflix and we call it “unwinding”.
It’s easy to blame the teacher for being boring. It’s easy to blame the screens for being a little too interesting. But what we haven’t considered is that we, as a society, have a constant need to be busy. Adults are fidgety, stressed out, and anxious. What do they do with that energy? Stuff. Anything. Anything that isn’t sitting still. Anything that distracts the mind.
Instead of looking for something to blame, instead of accepting short periods of isolation and distraction withdrawal as being a problem, let’s start to question why we can’t handle it. Let’s start to question why we don’t teach kids how to do it to make school easier.
In this day and age, that typically means we reach for technology. But the technology could be replaced with an actual book, it could be a journal, it could be knitting or crocheting, it could be drawing, it could be anything, including a hobby, that keeps the brain busy.
School isn’t a distraction because often kids aren’t mentally interested in the things they are learning. So what’s our fix for that? Interest-based learning. Okay. There is benefit in that. But what problem does it avoid? We haven’t taught kids to sit still without distractions. We’d rather blame the school for teaching things that are boring instead of recognizing that sitting still is a skill we don’t teach.
Distraction withdrawal is a real thing. Our schools are not built on distractions, nor should they be. What that means is that being ready for school includes learning how to be distraction free. But the first step in teaching kids to do that, is to teach the adults to do it.
Do you want the honest truth?
With so much going on in the world, so much distrust, paranoia, fear, anxiety, stress, and unrealistic expectations, being able to be distraction free is an act of rebellion and it would likely be considered irresponsible.
We live in a society where:
Taking a day off makes you a bum.
Sick leave is for wimps.
New moms should give birth and go back to work the next day.
Having time to cook a homemade meal from scratch is unrealistic.
Sleeping for more than 8 hours is lazy.
Homes need to be spotless.
Lawns needs to be perfectly manicured.
Even self-care is based on distraction. From getting our nails done to reading a book, it’s all distraction based. Self-care should be sitting in a room, by yourself, distraction free, staring at the wall for an hour to re-connect with yourself because you need that far more than you need a manicure. The fact that we don’t see that as a society is the truth of the problem.
It’s not that manicures and hobbies are bad things. They are not a substitute for your ability to connect with and have a relationship with yourself. The culture of self-care that has formed over the last few years just encourages different types of interest-based distractions. It’s just interest-based learning for grown ups.
We need to change the conversation around self-care to mean creating a fulfilling connection with yourself within yourself without the need for anything outside of yourself. When every adult on this planet can sit with themselves distraction free for one hour, we will have a different planet. Kids will learn to sit as well and it will change how classrooms function. It will change how learning happens. It will lower the level of anxiety and stress most adults feel. It will reduce the dependency on external validation and distraction. The planet will calm down.
Technology has added to and increased the pace of society. But what really happened? Technology made it easier to stay busy for longer. Technology fit right into a society that was becoming increasingly more dependent on distraction. It filled a void.
Some experts tell parents to let their kids be bored. What does that actually mean?
Let your kids be distraction free—they need that. Anybody see the irony there?
You go to bed and your brain goes off the deep-end. We think we’re losing it. Why does the mind do that? Distraction. That’s distraction withdrawal. That’s what the mind does. It can’t just be present, so it’s looks for something, no matter how ridiculous, to keep itself busy. It’s like the brains version of fidgeting. The guy on Shattered ended up playing with a metal tray. That’s the distraction withdrawal. Your mind begins that process every single evening when you lie in bed and don’t fall asleep right away. Think about that. Your mind can’t be distraction free long enough to let you fall asleep.
When people first start to meditate, they often fall asleep. The body’s nervous system finally starts to calm down, allowing the body to actually rest. Suddenly the body is learning how to fall asleep without distraction. That’s a good thing. That’s what we want to happen. In reality, you don’t need to meditate for this to happen. I used to fall asleep too when I would just sit, even without formal meditation.
The guy on Shattered ended up with insomnia—he couldn’t sleep. His body was looking for a distraction to calm down with so it could rest. He didn’t have a distraction, therefore he couldn’t calm down, and he couldn’t sleep. Insomnia is the result of the addiction to distraction.
Every adult is in a frantic state of low-grade panic masked as productivity and we don’t question that. We blame the outside world for our inability to sit still. It’s not Facebook’s fault you can’t sit still. You’ve been taught that unplugging is irresponsible. You don’t question that and you don’t change it, but you have the power to change it. You have the power to make a choice. You can teach yourself to be distraction free by beginning to sit still without distractions.
Mini-Challenge
Try it. Try sitting alone on the couch or in your bedroom with no distractions. In the comments, let me know what happens.
How long could you do it for?
Did you fall asleep? (This is normal as the body’s nervous system begins to calm down.)
What stories did you tell yourself? Did your mind make it into a problem?
Will you do it again?
Let me know how it goes!
Love to all.
Della