I wish I had thought of that line. Peggy Noonan, while opining about the media’s obessing on the presidential race, says this:

Earlier this week I heard a minister quote a spiritual genius: “All the problems in the world are caused by man’s inability to sit quietly in a room by himself.” We’re restless and need action, which in a modern media world means information. We need the busy buzz–the Internet, TV, instant messages, magazines and newspapers, the beeps and boops and bops. Rudy’s up in Iowa. Hillary’s stuck. We want to be among the first to have this information and the first to share it. And we want it not because it’s crucial but because it distracts us from the crucial. It takes our minds away from what is most important. Who you are, for instance, or what we are about. It’s a great relief not to think about the important. It’s a relief to focus on factoids.

Does this ring true, even profound, with you as it does with me? She hearkens back to the story of Esau, Isaac’s oldest son, who “sold his soul for a mess of pottage” (Genesis 25:29-34). In this case, she says, the wannabe presidents are selling their souls for a “pot of message.” (A little too cute, perhaps?)

About the candidates, she says this:

But it must be uncomfortable to walk around in a skin that isn’t really your own. It must be really damaging to your soul, if you have a soul, and not just appetites, or a rugged, rocky little sense of what you deserve.

Maybe the candidates would do themselves good by leaving the trail a few days and trying to sit quietly in a room, by themselves, with no distractions, and think about big things, such as who they are.

Right on!

Dave, still adjusting to walking around in his own skin.