📮 What to Do with Restlessness

Letters from a Seeker (Vol. 53)

Behind the Curtain at the Ballet by Henri Gervex (Public domain)

📮 Letters from a Seeker

“Letters from a Seeker” is an occasional series of short contemplations that explore the mystery, meaning, and art of living. The word ‘Seeker’ in the title is inspired by the Delphic maxim: “Be a seeker of wisdom.” *** This series is exclusive to members.

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Dear Fellow Traveler,

Have you noticed how difficult it is to do nothing, even for just a minute? Not “nothing” as laziness, but simply being present: no input, no checking, no fixing.

Feeling restless can make this seem unexpectedly hard. Sometimes, it's not even clear what exactly restlessness is.

It often presents itself as being productive: a sudden urge to reorganize the pantry, check one more email, skim another article, or open the fridge again—not because you’re hungry, but because standing still feels uncomfortable.

You tell yourself you’re being productive.

But if you pause long enough to notice your body—your jaw, your breathing, the speed of your thoughts—you can sense what’s really happening: you’re not just busy. You’re unsettled.

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) understood this tendency well. A mathematician, physicist, and Christian thinker, he was also a careful observer of the human heart. In his Pensées, he makes a simple claim: much of our unhappiness comes from our inability to remain at rest—to sit quietly in a room alone.

Surely our problems are more complex than that: money, health, relationships, grief, uncertainty, and the pressure of modern life. And Pascal wouldn’t deny any of it. But he’s pointing beneath our circumstances to a habit of mind.

Even when life is “fine,” we often don’t know what to do with unfilled space. We reach for movement, stimulation, conversation, and noise—because stillness brings us back to ourselves.

Pascal calls this tendency diversion. He doesn’t mean entertainment in the innocent sense. He means any activity—noble or trivial—that we use to avoid the inward facts we’d rather not touch.

It’s not just the endless scroll.

It can also be the endless striving.