A speaker explores why people struggle to sit alone with their thoughts, referencing a study on that discomfort. The video draws parallels between mental clutter and environmental pollution, then distinguishes loneliness from solitude as a path toward mindfulness.
For the first time in our lives, a lot of people have experienced even more loneliness in their life during the pandemic and lockdown. And the interesting thing about this is they did a study on men and women and asked them to either be alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes or if they couldn't give themselves an electric shock if they didn't want to be alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes. And the study is crazy because it shows that 30% men chose an electric shock and 60% of women chose an electric shock because they didn't want to be alone with their thoughts. And so we have found multiple ways to numb and distract ourselves from our own thoughts because we're scared of sitting with them. Now, I empathize with anyone and everyone who is scared of sitting with their thoughts. I get that I felt that way too. There are still thoughts that scare me and it's more comfortable to just forget they exist. But we all know that when you try and bury something like this or when you try and hide something like this, it just builds and builds and builds. It's almost like how so many, there's so many food and rubbish piles across the planet that are just hidden away. Yeah. And we try and hide them in a corner of the world where hopefully no one will notice them, these food piles and food mountains and. plastic mountains, but that is polluting the environment on a daily basis. And so similarly, our internal environment is being polluted by not addressing these thoughts. So one of the first things of the monk mind is to really learn that there is a difference between loneliness and solitude.
