Francesco Salamon | Please sit down and exist

I remember running at the Pottruck Health and Fitness Center once during a snowy winter and turning my head slightly to the left to admire an orderly line of beautiful runners. Among athletes, newcomers, adults, men and women, I noticed a common denominator: everyone was wearing AirPods while glued to a screen. Everyone, except me. Why do we maximize every precious moment of downtime for mindless entertainment, leaving no room for mind wandering? Why do we value overly stimulating distractions over contemplative introspections?

Obviously, there's nothing wrong with an uplifting song or a cathartic movie; Perhaps I'm unusual because finding solitude on the treadmill is inherently fun. Yet there must be some truth in my alienation. We are all simply addicted to stimulation, victims of a hedonistic culture that values ​​consumption over reflection and entertainment over solitude. Yes, I may be extreme, but you don't have to look far to realize that this is Penn: where people do nothing but talk, work, or consume. Why don't we shut up, sit down and exist?

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I suspect that part of the need for constant entertainment stems from the need for constant achievement: Penn students exist based on their accomplishments. If I take away what you're doing, what's left? Who are you without your goals? The hard truth is that for many of us, the answer is simply nothing. And that's what we do. We listen to the podcast in the morning, music between classes, Netflix at Pottruck and TikTok in the evening. However, this is only short-term crisis management. The root cause could well be discomfort.

Most of you seem afraid of facing the uncomfortable feeling of being left alone with nothing but yourself, not least because it requires vulnerability and contact with your kaleidoscopic self. At worst, you are unable to cope with it. So it's no surprise that all you do is try to remove it. There's no better distraction than stimulation, and Penn is, by definition, a restless machine feeding you stimuli.

Again, I don't hope to be extreme or generalize. However, I argue that it is essential to learn to deal with simply being alone, especially since the number of hours you spend alone increases proportionally with age, with a scary jump after graduation. If this seems daunting, let me be pragmatic: note that time spent alone is not correlated with feelings of loneliness until a person passes 75% or more of their waking time alone. So is the solution to isolate yourself and become a monk in Thailand? No (or maybe).

As an essayist William Deresiewicz he says, solitude is to solitude what idleness is to boredom. I don't think loneliness is a panacea. If you are alone, seek companionship and social time. If you are not alone, what I advocate is taking time for true solitude. I'm simply asking to learn the difference between time spent alone and aimlessly and to recognize the value of both. They are not exclusive, they are complementary.

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Find the balance that works for you. What helps me is finding random moments in my day to just exist. Lunch alone? I eat consciously while looking out the nearest window. Are classes ending earlier than expected? I sit in a chair for a few minutes and do absolutely nothing. I'm still finding my way, but I'm now thinking twice before judging the guy sitting alone at 1920 Commons or instinctively pulling out my headphones to fill all the holes in my life with videos and phone calls random.

The fact is that I am deeply afraid that a senior could graduate next month, summa cum laude, with an Ivy League degree, and yet know nothing about themselves and have no idea how to be in peace. Penn can teach you multivariate calculus and discounted cash flow analyses, but only you can learn introspection and dare to stop work for a second.

What ultimately matters is how you feel when you're about to go to bed after your CIS classes, your lunches at Pret, and your extracurricular activities at Huntsman Hall, and you turn off the lights . In that moment, can you sit aimlessly and stare at the ceiling, incredibly grateful for life? Everyone has the right and potential to feel this way, so I worry about those who instead feel like something is wrong and suppress it, turn a blind eye, and repeat over and over again. When you experience this level of peace with yourself and the world, you realize that it is priceless and that your only wish is for everyone around you to experience it too.

FRANCESCO SALAMONE is a second-year Wharton student from Palermo, Italy. His email address is [email protected].