Settle down in your room at a moment when you have nothing else to do.
Say “I am now with myself,” and just sit with yourself.
After an amazingly short time you will most likely feel bored.
This teaches us one very useful thing. It gives us insight into the fact that
if after ten minutes of being alone with ourselves we feel like that,
it is no wonder that others should feel equally bored! Why is this so?
It is so because we have so little to offer to our own selves as food for thought,
for emotion and for life. If you watch your life carefully you will discover
quite soon that we hardly ever live from within outwards;
instead we respond to incitement, to excitement. In other words,
we live by reflection, by reaction… We are completely empty,
we do not act from within ourselves but accept as our life a life
which is actually fed in from the outside; we are used to things happening
which compel us to do other things. How seldom can we live simply
by means of the depth and the richness we assume that there is within ourselves.
~ Archbishop Anthony Bloom
from Beginning to Pray
