We Scurry Like Rats

As we all know, a massive problem we all face is that we are really busy. People need stuff from us. We are overloaded at work. Our spouses and kids need our attention. We have to call the credit card company, cancel this or that service, deal with parking tickets. We just run around like crazed madmen. We are crazed madmen.

Tolstoy wrote about this in War and Peace. But he put it in a different context.

Prince Andrey is in the middle of the Battle of Austerlitz. There is so much going on all around him. There is so much drama and chaos in war. It’s utter madness. Nothing goes according to plan. Normally peaceable people are acting like madmen. The Prince is in danger. His life is at stake.

Wait, this sounds like our lives. We are surrounded by drama and chaos. We get caught up in the current, and next thing you know, our lives are over, and we never got a chance to really think. What are we doing? And why?

Prince Andrey was watching some French soldiers fighting with Russian artillerymen fighting French soldiers who had entered their trench.

Then the Prince gets shot.

‘What’s this? am I falling? my legs are giving way under me,’ he thought, and fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle of the French soldiers with the artilleryman was ending, and eager to know whether the red-haired artilleryman was killed or not, whether the cannons had been taken or saved. But he saw nothing of all that. Above him there was nothing but the sky— the lofty sky, not clear, but still immeasurably lofty, with grey clouds creeping quietly over it. ‘How quietlv, peacefully, and triumphantly, and not like us running, shouting, and fighting, not like the Frenchman and artilleryman dragging the mop from one another with frightened and frantic faces, how differently are those clouds creeping over that lofty, limitless sky. How was it I did not see that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it at last. Yes! all is vanity, all is a cheat, except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing but that. But even that is not, there is nothing but peace and stillness. And thank God! . . .’

I would like to think that the internet is the root of all the noise in our lives. If only we could remove it! But no!

The internet is not the problem. We have been scurrying around like rats for centuries. Anything to avoid the great silence, the great truth.

And how happy I am to have found it at last. Yes! all is vanity, all is a cheat, except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing but that. But even that is not, there is nothing but peace and stillness.

We need to slow down. Only in stillness can you find meaning and truth. Only in stillness can you find God.