One of my daily readers is Inner Excellence by Jim Murphy. From today’s reading:

“The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace.”

Trappist monk Thomas Merton

To further the point — from the book: A study in the journal Science found that busyness has become so pervasive that people would rather feel pain than nothing at all. In the study, the participants preferred to shock themselves with electricity than be alone with their thoughts (and, of course, without their cell phones) for 6–15 minutes.

A clear sign that we are suffering from a disease. Seriously. And one of the reasons why being able to sit in silence is a skill that I look for in hires, mentees, and hope to cultivate in myself and the people closest to me.