When you say my name, I am no longer there. What am I?
Answer? Silence. (riddle from La Vita e Bella)
Silence can be exterior, when the machines are off and no one else is home. You look around and wonder what's missing. You realize that you need some kind of sound or you're going to go crazy. In a calm panic, you turn on the radio or television and give a small sigh of relief. One more problem fixed. Then you go about your merry way and forget that there ever was such a thing as silence. Another exterior silence is when you're in the car. More likely than not, music or talk radio is on and even blasting.
Silence can be awkward. After someone says something they think is funny and you don't, you don't respond. Someone could say something serious that you disagree with and then there's silence. Silence can be talking to someone that makes you feel uncomfortable and with whom you have little in common. At all times, though, you look to break the awkward silence.
Silence can be those precious few moments when a parent appreciates the "blissful silence" for all of two moments before the baby starts wailing. Silence can be the moments after receiving terrible news, when the person is in a stunned silence, trying to comprehend what they were told.
Silence can be a state of mind. The calm peacefulness that drowns out noise and leaves you rejuvenated. However, this silence is rarely experienced.
Too often in our modern world, we have the radio, the television, the iPod, the video games, the music, the machines...the noise...silence has no place in our times and is too rarely sought after. Why? Because of what silence causes.
When there is nothing else to distract us, we are forced to think. Often times, thinking leads to personal reflections. Sometimes, we don't like ourselves and would just rather not think about life, ourselves, our situations, and our shortcomings. We figure that if we refuse to recognize them, maybe, just maybe, they'll go away.
In reality, though, silence can be a great blessing as it calms us and helps us to find solutions to our troubles in life. When I sit in my room working on school, I sometimes space out and meditate. Sometimes I think of something I did, sometimes I think about my next blog, sometimes I think about someone in my life, sometimes I pray. Sometimes, I just enjoy the interior silence that rids me of my agitation.
There are so many great things about silence, but these benefits are too rarely thought of. Spend five minutes of your day in silence and maybe you'll find yourself, if nothing else, having a better outlook on life.
I love my silence. For as much music as I listen to, for as much TV as I watch, for as much as I like the sheer sound of my own voice (except when recorded and played back to me), I do like the quiet that comes while hiding out in the Autoclave room at work or sitting in the basement with all the doors shut and all the lights out, when driving home in the middle of the night - it's fantastic.
There is, however, one silence you didn't mention that I think is among the best - The silence between two (or more?) people that simply understand each other well enough to function without speech or sound. Like when you're curled up with someone who has their elbow in your kidney.
-acertainsaint-
OMGosh, you're right! I knew I was forgetting something...:P Along those lines, I once was on the phone with one of my best friends and we were talking while we were doing math and then we stopped talking and just sat on the phone while doing our math...it was totally silent for like...an hour, except for the occasional "This problem is driving me crazy!"
Oh, and side note...I LOVE driving at night...we live in the country and so I have to take back roads when we go to the grocery store...I just love to coast and go 35mph when I'd go 55 during the day and just enjoy the darkness. :)
RESPECT LIFE
http://progressiveu.org/blog/respectlife
"It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
~Mother Teresa
Well, I'm a strange one. If I have the radio on when I turn on the car, I'll usually end up blocking it out throughout my car ride anyway. If I start on the road by talking on the phone and hang up before I reach my destination, I'll often just forget to turn the radio back up. When I get up in the morning, I go to my computer to check my e-mail. Unless my sisters are home, the TV isn't usually on (except when I watch some of my shows... I've been really into The Doctors recently), and I can go hours in silence because I'm so focused on whatever it is that I'm doing. Of course, my house is never completely silent... during the summer our AC runs in cycles, and our pellet stove runs during the winter. Our fridge makes strange sounds at random points, and my dog will move around the house, scratching the walls and back door as she moves, or I hear her stretch out on the couch next to me.
But yeah... I don't have much issue with silence. In fact, I have a really hard time reading when I have music on (unless it's so soft that I only get an impression of it), and I love to read, so it's often pretty quiet here :)
~C
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Yeah...as the oldest of five, I generally have to just block out the noise and find the interior silence despite the TV, kids yelling, sister singing, etc.
Ditto...I used to be able to have the music blasting while I did school, but I lost that talent. :P
RESPECT LIFE
http://progressiveu.org/blog/respectlife
"It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
~Mother Teresa
Well, I haven't done homework in a while, but I had no issue doing that while the music was on. It was just reading that I couldn't have it on for. I'd get too distracted by the words, especially when my favorite songs came on. But when I was studying, I tuned it out. Dunno how exactly that works...
~C
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Silence is the reason I never want to live in a city. Silence is what makes me long for Assateague Island.
Because in what most people consider silence, my ears ring with the sound of electricity. I can hear lights, and it's annoying as heck. I think the greatest form of silence is a purely natural one... one in which ears don't ring.
And that's comin' at ya' from yer local redneck hippie.
--
Ooh, ooh, pick me, pick me!!!
I'm saying this w/o reading the actual blog because i don't care if it I'm miles off.
I'm scared of the silence of my heart and soul,
and I don't mean when they are at peace.
I've felt something extremely close to the silence that kills you inside.
It was when I just didn't hear any reason that my brain wanted to give me, any voices to tell me to give a damn about my world, and didn't want to enjoy the music.
I didn't care for anything...I was literally in my room for a year, the only people I came out to see were my grandmothers, one who had Alzheimers, and the other was only visiting from Pakistan for a short while.
There was nothing that made me want to live, to speak up, to not want the silence...no TV, no music, there were tons of books, I didn't touch any of them.
That me is what scares me, because I wanted and enjoyed the silence...I didn't care.
I don't want that.
I don't want a repeat of that.
"He who awaits much can expect little."
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, No One Writes to the Colonel
(me thinks...I will meet GM in another life)
Shhhh... sometimes it hard for me to even quiet my mind. Its a struggle even when listening to other, I guess my thoughts are to loud. At othertimes I am as focused as mvenus described.
Being alone with your thoughts is an amazingly important need for people that does often get over looked. Just as important is shuting your mind down, silencing your inner voice and just listening for the guidance. I think this is what meditators do and what the bible means by 'be still and listen'. Sometimes our brains are to busy to see whats really going on.
I encourage all of you too to find time at least weekly to just be silent and to be comfortable with it. It always has helped me to understand myself and others better.
Silence is paradise, pure and honest moments with yourself and others.
There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.~- Anais Nin
My biggest problem is that I am a very loud, outgoing person. Whenever I am around people, I cannot stand silence. Something about it forces me to break the silence, even if it is random chatter.
When I'm alone however, it is different. I usually prefer silence to background noise. It's very peaceful and helps me de-stress.
:) I'm basically the same way.
RESPECT LIFE
http://progressiveu.org/blog/respectlife
"It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
~Mother Teresa
Sometimes I'm just sick of the constant presence of media or technology noise, whether it be music, TV, computer...whatever.
...and I'm a media major. Go figure.
~ *~
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Mind Control is Easier Than You Think