A Fear of Nothing

In class we talked about how most people are afraid to do nothing. We always have to be doing something, even if it’s just watching tv. Someone suggested that the reason for this is because humans need constant distraction. If we were to literally sit down and do nothing, we would be forced to face our own thoughts. We might think about trivial things at first, such as what we ate that day or we might try to analyze a recent dream we had. But eventually we would have to think about difficult philosophical subjects. So the fear we experience is not actually of idleness; it is of our own thoughts.