Silence

 

A fourth-year university student, an autistic nineteen-year-old, a large black poodle, a deaf fifteen-year-old cat, two kindergarten teachers, and a two-year pandemic functioning in a twelve hundred square foot bungalow most days, does not leave room for accidental silence to play a large role in our lives. In our home, there is a lack of space for silence.  The fourth-year university student and I are in constant communication when she is around. I get to learn about everything that is new in the world and what she is thinking and feeling.  I love having this honor but not after 8:30 at night.  I simply check out and need a little time to be with my own thoughts.   My autistic nineteen-year-old does not speak often in her day at her job placement or in her school situation so she saves all of her emotion, vocabulary, and communication for home.  It starts the minute she gets out of bed and ends when she is calling from her bedroom until she falls asleep. There is no volume button on the overwhelm and anxiety release at home where she feels most comfortable.  My husband and I share a classroom and the back and forth of information is endless as well as the stories that unfold from being with five-year-olds all day.   Did I mention the lack of silence involved with being with five-year-olds all day?   They can't learn and interact without lots of voice so there is no changing that environment and it is often a blessing to get away from the other noise of the world.   The deaf fifteen-year-old cat can't hear herself anymore so her meow has gone up several decibels and increased its frequency and inopportune times of urgency such as midnight and four a.m.   The black poodle is really the quietest in the house which isn't saying much.   I know we have not been the only family making a go of living, working, and learning together in a more concentrated fashion so that left me with some thoughts and reasoning for the oversharing of my home life.

 I really think that we are all struggling with silence deprivation more than ever and I would even go as far as to say it has more of an effect, or at least as much of one as our lack of rest.  There are the snowblowers, lawnmowers, leaf blowers, plows, cars, motorbikes, highways, coffee grinders, fans, timers, televisions,  car radios,  computers, and phones that have all been with us for some time.  We also have people texting, emailing, zooming, and popping into our virtual conversations constantly. Social media and media in general, sharing everything that is happening as it is happening when we just open our phones.   My concern is that this lack of silence in our lives is disconnecting us from ourselves.  Depending on your relationship to silence, you may not see this as a problem but silence is not only the absence of sound but is synonymous with peace and noise translates often to chaos and hysteria, as we've seen highlighted throughout the last couple of years. 

 As it came closer to posting this week, I was starting to feel a bit anxious.  I  didn't have any idea what I would write about and I had set the goal of sharing a post weekly.  This is the first time this has happened to me since I started the blog and I was curious about it.  What I realized was that as my life lacks silence that is not purposeful, I had not been able to make time for any this week or maybe for a couple of weeks. There have been many interruptions to the already irregular life that we have established like online learning, lockdowns, and storm days.  I am sure I am not alone in how I can move through what is happening but in the "after" or "return to", I tend to feel the feels of the past situations.  I guess this is reflective of a fight or flight response.  So this is where I found myself without any creative thoughts that were flowing naturally.  So I did what we all seem to do with a problem these days,   I got out my computer and started researching silence.  I found science to back up a lack of silence as even a physiological problem.  There were studies of individuals in open offices versus closed and they found that the workers in open offices actually had more adrenalin in their urine translating as more stress.   The people in the closed offices had better sleep, digestion and were less irritable which correlated with more silence and less stress.  

I'm not a researcher and science is not my forte,, to say the least, but what if science is telling us something about our obsession with noise and distraction and what it is doing to us and to our society at large.  I have never heard of anyone being tapped into inspiration or creativity in anything other than quiet.   People who walk the neighborhoods or grocery aisles with their phone to their ear chatting are not taking in the person needing help with their cart or the mom needing someone to hold the door so she can get her stroller inside.   They aren't seeing or connecting with the people around them that they may need to offer themselves to or that may have something to offer them. The lack of silence in their surroundings is contributing to their disconnect or the loss of attention for what really matters to them. They aren't aware of how their back may be aching or how their recent experiences are causing them to lash out at some innocent person they come in contact with.  When we are turning on the television for companionship maybe instead we need to feel the loneliness or emptiness to see what it is really trying to tell us about our need for connection.   I am sure that not every silence should be filled in conversation or shared space.  What if we got comfortable with silence and let it into our world or even demanded it from all the external sources of noise?  If we left the radio off on our car commute and instead noticed the sun rising and thought about what we were grateful for in the day ahead.   If we continue to fall asleep with tik tok videos or games on our phones, how will our over-busy mind be given space to unfurl.   When we walk through a day of a person, not unlike ourselves who wakes to their phone alarm, is thrust into conversation and problem solving with the people we live with, or move onto automatically checking into the weather channel, morning new shows, and our phones, what opportunity does our mind and body have to know how we are feeling and what we want from our day?  Where and how will you creep into your own mindset? Will it be in the work tasks and demands being asked of you by your co-workers or the ten thousand other voices we tune into saying this is important, and this is.   Where will our own deciphering of a situation come into play when we can't drown out the noise of those frantic, and sometimes manic voices, full of stories others are telling us about our own lives and current real or imagined realities?  

I read an eloquent quote about silence, by Dadi Janki, that has stuck with me as I write this, "Silence is the language of the soul". If this is true, then we are regularly disconnecting willingly at times and more often, because of imposed noise, from our soul, and therein lies my concern.

Silence may feel uncomfortable and unnecessary at times but the lack of silence is cumulative and eventually, we can't hear ourselves anymore. We won't be able to filter out the information coming at lightning speed and recognize the one small voice that is asking to be heard?  This voice is our own and is the one that can connect us to peace,  and to the silence within ourselves.  

I recently heard of the Dali Lama saying that the western woman would save the world.   My dear rest friend and author of Daring to Rest, Karen Brody said she would take it a step further and say that a well-rested woman would save the world.    I am stealing this statement to add my own perspective. It is only through silence, that we will recognize our needs for rest,  for peace, and connecting to those quiet soul whispers that will allow us to show up in the world in a way that is respectful of ourselves and others.  The natural elements of the world are not asking to be saved but for us to stay awake and silent enough to hear their guidance forward.

 I did find my silence this week when I stepped outside in the early morning after our latest snowstorm for a run.  The trees were ladened with heavy snow and brightened up the entire street.  There was a soft glow from the street light reflecting on my path and the insulation of both the darkness and blanket of white, before the buzz of snowblowers and passing cars, held stillness and peace that I witnessed and was, in that brief moment.  This was the silence that only comes from recognizing the silence of the natural world, the sun, the moon, the trees, the still water,  breathing it in and allowing it into our heart space.