A few years ago, in search of inner peace, I signed up for a Vipassana meditation course: ten days of silence, no phones, no books, no eye contact, and, most horrifyingly, ten hours a day of sitting still.

The goal? Strip away distractions, sit with your thoughts, and transcend suffering. The problem? I took ‘letting go’ very seriously, which is possibly the least enlightened approach.

By day two, my brain had become an over-caffeinated personal assistant, firing off reminders about things I hadn’t thought about in years. By day four, I had mentally renovated my imaginary dream house in Japan (a country I had never even been to). By day six, I was fantasizing about an emergency that would require us all to leave immediately, ideally via dramatic helicopter rescue.

Then, at some point, a guy in my group lost it. He stood up in the middle of a meditation session, shouted “FUCK!” at full volume, and stormed out. He never came back. I understood him deeply.

Because here’s the thing: stillness is unbearable. And if you’ve ever felt the compulsive urge to refresh your emails for absolutely no reason, or if you feel slightly uneasy when there’s a pause in conversation, you’ll understand exactly what I mean.

French philosopher Blaise Pascal once said, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” That was in the 1600s, before smartphones, before social media, before infinite distractions. If it was true then, it’s even worse now.

Are we just land sharks with passports?

There’s a myth that sharks die if they stop swimming. Not entirely true, but some species, like great whites, do need to keep moving or they’ll suffocate.

Sometimes, I think people like me (who move abroad, start fresh in new cities, and convince themselves that everything will make sense once they’re somewhere else) are just land sharks with passports.

Every time I get too settled, the itch begins. Maybe I should move to Berlin. Or Lisbon. Or Buenos Aires. Surely I’d be more productive there. More creative. More myself. The logic is nonsense, of course; no matter where you go, you still have to deal with yourself. But the belief persists.

Travel is a socially acceptable way to scratch the restlessness itch. If you’re constantly moving, constantly experiencing new things, it feels like achievement. An exciting, Instagrammable way of avoiding the fact that, eventually, you have to sit in a room alone with your thoughts.

Why doing nothing feels like failure

The problem isn’t just that we’re restless. It’s that modern life has made stillness feel like laziness.

Somewhere along the way, everything became about optimisation. You can’t just go for a walk, you have to track your steps. You can’t just enjoy a film, you have to watch it with foreign subtitles so you’re learning another language. Even relaxation has been turned into a productivity hack: you’re not resting, you’re recharging for maximum efficiency.

This is why the idea of just sitting still feels so wrong. If you’re not learning, improving, monetising something — then what are you even doing? I’ve genuinely caught myself feeling guilty for not reading fast enough, as if I’m slacking on my personal knowledge quota.

Even meditation, the literal practice of stillness, has been turned into a competitive sport. There are apps now that rank how well you did nothing. I once saw a guy wearing a T-shirt that said “I HUSTLE HARDER THAN YOU MEDITATE.” I wanted to lie down on the floor.

Stillness isn’t just important, it’s the key to everything (allegedly)

The irony is, while I was failing at stillness, I was also reading books about it. Because why experience something when you can study it instead? This led me to Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday, which makes a bold claim: stillness isn’t just useful, it’s the key to everything. Creativity. Clarity. Good decision-making. Actual happiness.

And while I was very busy highlighting key passages and taking detailed notes, I had the sudden, horrifying realisation that I was doing it again. I was working at understanding stillness, instead of actually being still.

But the core idea stuck with me: restlessness isn’t just an annoying personality trait, it’s avoidance. We don’t compulsively check our phones because we actually care what’s on them. We do it because we can’t handle even a second of empty space. And that’s a problem. Because if we never slow down long enough to actually listen to ourselves, we just keep running in circles, mistaking movement for progress.

So… now what?

I’d love to say that my Vipassana experience transformed me. But the truth is, I went straight back to mindlessly checking my phone, refreshing my emails, and watching epic fail compilations on YouTube.

Stillness remains something I know is valuable but struggle to practice. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe we don’t need to turn stillness into another productivity goal. Another thing to optimise. Another thing to feel bad at.

But I do think it’s worth noticing when we’re avoiding it. Catching ourselves filling every gap with pointless scrolling. Noticing the compulsion to move, refresh, relocate, escape.

Because at the end of the day, no matter how many miles you travel, no matter how many new cities you live in, no matter how many Czech films you force yourself to watch with subtitles in the name of “learning”, you’re still left with the same challenge: sitting in a room alone with your thoughts. And honestly? That might be the hardest journey of all.

*First published in Milk and Honey, Ceske Budejovice.