Alone, all one – Revelations from a Night on the Stockholm Ferry

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."

These words by the French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and theologian Blaise Pascal date back to the 17th century—a time he could hardly imagine the stimuli surrounding us in 2025.

I'm writing this in the middle of the Baltic Sea, on a dark March evening, somewhere between Finland and Sweden. On a ferry that undoubtedly hosts more entertainment and sensory distractions between two countries than Pascal's small kingdom saw in years.

Even though the ever-present internet, the iconic boredom fighter of recent decades, doesn't reach my cabin and doesn't allow for even the lightest mental scrolling, boredom has still been made practically impossible.

Outside my cabin awaits an endless array of bingo rows, karaoke out-of-tune, flashing lights, games, and shelves of large duty free packages.

“My Heart Will Go On” is crackling through karaoke speakers—probably for about the millionth time in this ship’s 30-year history. The timeless Finnish pop classics have endured just as well, regardless of key.

Shrimp and meatballs peacefully coexist on overflowing plates—quantity seems key. Toblerone bars stacked in endless rows, alongside fifty vodka varieties and countless wine gums. The band urges everyone towards the bar, and a conga line forms accordingly.

An overload of abundance and sensory overstimulation crammed into nearly 200 meters of floating metal.

Pascal probably wouldn’t have survived this night.

But what was his deeper message?

We don't know for sure. Yet it doesn't take the LinkedIn profile of a leading mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and theologian of his time to see what the original quote points towards and why it remains relevant 400 years later.

Are we boring?

What does being alone in silence truly mean? The word itself offers a profound clue, if we look deeper than its everyday usage.

The English language provides a hint: "alone" originates from the phrase "all one"—whole, united, connected. Initially, it meant independence and unity, not separation or loneliness.

Gradually the meaning shifted: "all one" lost a letter and became "alone," shifting the tone from unity towards isolation.

Language evolves, as does everything, yet within this small etymological journey lies a powerful message: solitude can still hold a sense of wholeness.

So why do we often avoid being alone without distractions?

For a couple of decades, I taught people how to move and breathe. To sit and breathe. To do absolutely nothing but experience what's present—whether they sat alone in Pascal’s quiet room or anywhere else.

Rarely is silence truly empty, at least initially. Usually, it holds an urge to fill oneself—an urge for entertainment, stimulation, achievement. Especially once you remove physical movement, sensory inputs, and external anchors, the space quickly fills with boredom and restlessness.

If we find it difficult to sit quietly and breathe, does that mean we are in bad company—or avoiding something essential? Is breathing, the breather, or the room itself fundamentally boring?

When waiting, we habitually reach for our phones and almost subconsciously scroll through feeds and cat videos. What are we filling, and with what?

How would it feel if there was no need to fill any space, and every moment felt like arrival?

These questions are universal and timeless. They transcend culture and historical context.

Yoga philosophy, Taoism, Zen Buddhism, Christian mysticism, Sufism, Stoicism, and countless other traditions have all discovered the same inner state—a space inherently complete and independent of external factors.

Not because something was added, but because nothing needs to be added.

Why then is this state so elusive? Why do we fill the empty room and external silence, even though it poses no demands or problems?

If the challenge in the 17th century was the inability to sit quietly, is the problem in 2025 fundamentally different—or merely technologically advanced and richer in distractions?

Sitting alone in a silent room isn't difficult because something essential is missing—but because we've forgotten what silence holds. We are unused to being without the noise of our minds.

The mind resists silence because silence is a threat—it quiets the mind’s endless stream of thought.

Pascal's dream

Pascal saw humanity’s inability to sit quietly alone as the root of all problems. What, then, would Pascal’s ideal world look like?

Perhaps it would hold fewer compulsive cycles of achievement. Decisions wouldn't emerge from restlessness or feelings of inadequacy. There would be fewer empty words and meaningless content. Fewer inner and interpersonal conflicts. More spaciousness, opportunity, and perhaps a touch of lightness. Less seriousness, more gentleness, perhaps.

Maybe even cruise ships would be different.

Early morning waves from the south woke me as we approached Åland. That evening, I sit on a leather sofa at a Swedish café chain with a friend whom I've felt I’ve always known, though officially we've shared two decades.

The café chain’s concept is meticulously uniform. This sofa could belong to any café in any city. Likewise, the hurried footsteps outside, the rhythms of days and rush hours—the endless cycle we so easily find ourselves caught in, year after year.

Nature documentaries often compress an entire year into mere seconds. If you filmed this or any other city similarly, you couldn't avoid comparing it to an anthill.

After enough cycles, the anthill would look unchanged—but the ants would have been replaced without anything fundamentally changing.

Addicted to life

If Pascal saw our inability to handle being alone as problematic, perhaps the modern version is our inability to handle life slowing down or missing anything meaningful.

My friend speaks about being "addicted to life"—the constant experiencing, achieving, doing, and feeling driven by the fear of missing out. Life must constantly feel like something—not just anything, but something familiar and continuously escalating.

This constant filling and craving for familiarity prevents us from recognizing something deeply familiar that we rarely identify.

Perhaps those spontaneous and uncontrolled moments where we briefly forget ourselves—whether in nature, enjoying art, or laughing uncontrollably—aren’t disappearances but reminders.

Could we also remember this alone, in an empty room?

I step back onto the ship. Different ferry, yet everything remains familiar.

I retreat to my cabin where the internet connection fades. I am alone in an empty room, but soon descend two floors. On a quiet March Wednesday, slot machines sing, buffet tables overflow, duty-free shops are filled with unmissable offers, and the pub quiz is crowded.

Outside my window, the Baltic Sea moves. Waves merge, disappear, and are born anew. A single wave is never separate from the sea—nor are we separate from life.

The ultimate answer to Pascal’s dilemma isn’t withdrawing from the world or locking oneself away in solitude.

Rather, it's remembering we've never truly been separate—and that silence is ultimately more familiar, safer, and fuller than we remembered.

Nothing disappears into silence—on the contrary, everything truly real, meaningful, and capable of creating positive change in the world emerges from it.