The ordinary life of humanity is a continuous effort to avoid oneself. Everybody is doing it, in different ways of course. Nobody can sit silently and be alone. Watch yourself, how fidgety you become if there is nothing to do. If the radio is not there and television is not there and the newspaper is not there and you don't have a book to read and nobody to talk to, just think how fidgety, restless you become. You are almost in a panic, as if you are dying. You need something to remain occupied with, you cannot be with yourself.
And whenever you are with yourself you start feeling bored. Now, this is strange. And if somebody else feels bored with you, you feel very hurt, but you yourself feel bored with yourself! And everybody is the same: nobody feels good being alone.
Man is constantly escaping from himself; that is his whole activity. In business, chasing money, or in politics, chasing power, a constant need to be amused is there, to be entertained is there. Go to the football match or go to the cricket match or go to the races – but go somewhere. Join some club, some crowd, go to the movie, be a spectator somewhere or other, but don't ever sit silently.