How comfortable are you in the silence?
We live in a culture filled with noise — from actual noise of cars honking and people talking to the noise of information and news that isn’t always necessary or relevant.
And yet, even though this noise can give us a headache, we often gravitate to it because it feels more palatable than the silence.
Gravitating to the noise is habit.
When I was growing up, every room of my house had a television. It was on as background noise during weeknight dinner. It played in my bedroom while I did my homework. I kept that habit when I went off to college and beyond — well into my adulthood — until I decided one day to turn off the television and learn to get comfortable in silence.
Breaking the habit of external noise was one thing. It’s the inner noise that takes longer to let go: the constant narration of life, the churning thoughts, the anxiety and worry.
I find that the best time for silencing the inner and outer noise is first thing in the morning, before I’m fully awake, as I’m getting ready for my morning workout.
With practice, I have noticed how much I can hear in the silence.
Birds tweeting to each other in the pre-dawn hours.
The settling of a house.
Footsteps down the hall.
Snow falling outside.
The soft breeze on a summer day.
The lapping of waves against the shore.
The hum of a computer or a refrigerator.
The faint hum of a car driving down a nearby road.
Learning to sit in silence — and with silence — is one of those skills that should be taught in schools. Silence contains wisdom. It embraces us with warmth.
Imagine how our world would look if we learned how to listen to the silence from an early age.
It’s never to late to start practicing, and Christmas is an especially good day to start.
What’s one source of noise you can turn off, even for an hour a day, to practice being in the silence?
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