Thank you, Kenneth Cañedo, for this question.
I think this is a great question to ask in times of quarantine and self-isolation. Many of us have been forced to spend more time with ourselves than usual, and more than we would have ever intended to otherwise. In these moments, when we are all alone, it is so important to be able to spend quality, peaceful time with ourselves. This, however, is not easy. People are usually uncomfortable spending time in solitude. Let us recall the famous quote by Blaise Pascal: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” This citation comes from his book, Thoughts, in which he argues that people look for a company and commotion because they are not able to find pleasure in solitude. This is because they fear to face the thoughts that come to mind when they are alone – thoughts about the unfortunate feebleness of our mortal human fate. Pascal reasoned that having company is a distraction from thinking. He realized that thoughts that come to us when we are alone are not always welcome, and this search for distraction, the drive to quiet the internal dialogue, leads to the many problems of humanity.
Pascal was not the only person who understood that our relationship with our own thoughts can cause problems and suffering. The old Buddhist tradition uses the phrase, “Monkey Mind,” to describe what we experience when we sit down quietly and start to observe our own thoughts. Our thoughts are restless and fanciful; we can experience them occurring all on their own, and sometimes even against our will. The meditative practice is not to quiet our thoughts down, but to learn how to see them so that they do not necessarily define us. Another person who also noted the internal dialogue was the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. He described the ego as the result of a disagreement between the unconscious and the super ego, where the first is wild and the second noble. All of these examples allude to the experience of an individual who has many thoughts and voices in one body. Since we all have this internal dialogue, wouldn’t it be nice to have it with someone friendly?
When it is quiet enough for our thoughts to become quite loud, in times of solitude like that of self-isolation, we face two choices:
- we can become enemies with them, fighting them or trying to escape them, thus making the experience of solitude difficult; or
- we can become friends with them, letting them come and go as they wish, without judgment.
But, putting theory aside, if we consider these two ideas together – “I am my worst enemy” and “I am my best friend” – doesn’t one of them just sound more appealing?
What do you think? Can you be friends with yourself? Let us know in the comments.
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I am a PhD candidate in Political and Social Thought at the University of Kent, Canterbury. I am researching modern Western cosmologies and approaches to organicism. My interests lie in the area of continental political thought, process ontologies and the philosophy of technology. My favourite philosophers are A.N. Whitehead and F.W.J. Schelling, whom I admire for their organic systematizations of nature and natural knowledge.