Scientists say that you can go about three weeks without eating food and they also say that you can go about three days without drinking water and about three minutes without breathing air. But they do not ever talk about silence.
That's what I want to do today, I want to talk to you about silence and the importance of silence, why it is something that we need in our everyday lives and why we are suffering without it.
You see, silence is very natural. It is the Yin to the Yang, the dark to the light. Silence is the quiet to the sound. That is what silence is, it is literally the absence of sound. It is like a vacuum (not the thing that sucks up all of the dirt and dust in your house but an absence of material).
A clinical definition of silence is an absence of auditory stimulus. I want to talk about that but I am also referring to an absence of relational stimulus where you are not adding more things to this bucket of a relationship but instead things are allowed to settle and be still. I want to argue this. We need more silence in our lives. Things are too loud and too chaotic.
Most people have their headphones in right now if they are listening to this blogcast and this is great because we are going to do an exercise of silence in just a minute. Silence is stopping the inflow of stimulus. It is important that we have silence because without silence we become out of tune with the rest of the world. Without silence we cannot enjoy the rest of the world.
I play the guitar (I know it is exciting, right!? Everyone loves a guy who plays the guitar.) What is important when I play the guitar is this: at times I have to stop playing the guitar to re-tune my guitar. Because I am playing the guitar it gets out of tune. The strings slacken and it no longer sounds the way that it did. It is no longer the same guitar that it was when I started playing because of my playing it.
No, I am not playing it wrong, but it is that when we use our voices excessively we get out of tune with who we are. Without that re-tuning of silence to re-hone ourselves and find our center one again we are unable to play as beautifully, or speak as elegantly, or relate to people on the same level that is necessary for our relationships to grow.
When you have been surrounded by noise for such a long time and you find yourself in silence it is a beautiful and relaxing experience. You know this, you have been there before.
The silence that you have had in the past is a reminder of the importance of the silence that you will experience in the future. You will only experience that silence if you plan for it.
I say that you have to plan for silence because silence is becoming more rare in our world. There is the really interesting article that I think you should read: Nowadays the Tranquility of Silence is Almost Unheard of.
It is written by this woman named Cynthia Hubert that explains this, it talks about this guy who records audio outside. He records the sounds of nature, and nature is pretty silent. One of the things that he said was that back in the 1960's it would take him about 15 hours to get an hour of usable material. It is crazy because now it takes him over 130 times that much recording time to get material that does not have humans in it. Material that does not have the things that we say or the things that we have made in it.
It is insane. The world that we are in now is excessively noisy even compared to the world 50 years ago. If I played my guitar 130 times more often than I do now I would have to re-tune it more often. We have to have silence so that we can do the practice of re-tuning ourselves. Re-finding what it is that we are about, our core notes.
Just like the guitar has its strings set to specific tones, there are things in our lives that we ring true with that we need to be able to re-align and re-sync with. That is what silence gives us.
Over this last summer I started a weird new practice that I want to encourage you to try as well. I tried eating skittles, the delicious bite sized candy, one at a time. Normally I would just shovel a handful of them into my mouth, chew them up, and enjoy the delicious sugary goodness that is skittles. But this summer I realized something; if I slowed down and just at them one at a time then not only does that spread the pack of skittles out over a long time but it makes each one enjoyable and special.
The reason that it is enjoyable and special is this: Just like eating the skittles slowly helps me experience each skittle, having silence in-between my interactions or in-between the things that I say helps me and the others enjoys what it is inside of that individual interaction or thing. Because we have silence separating out what we have experienced, what we are experiencing, and what we will experience in the future we are able to slow down and enjoy them for what they are instead of taking all of them at once and not being able to interpret a single one of them.
That is what silence gives us.
For the next two minutes, keep your headphones in but engage with me in silence to re-tune yourself, your relationships, your mind, and re-tune to who you are.
Welcome back.
I hope your experience in silence, this weird idea, that you would listen to this podcast just to have silence, has been helpful for you.
Silence, it is natural. It is around us in the entire world. We are destroying it when we start engaging in so much activity that we leave out the silence.
Not only that, but silence helps you re-tune. It helps you get back in touch with who you are as a person, as a friend. Not only that too but silence is what allows for us to enjoy each thing for what it is.
We are so busy shoveling all of these experiences and conversations and words that we are not taking the time to enjoy those experiences.
So, I hope I have encouraged you and inspired you to find ways to put more silence in your life. You won't regret it.
