What does silence mean to you? A straightforward question or is it?
Before reading on quickly write down five words to describe silence.
Normal Linney eccentric ponderings are resumed. As this is a short post to encourage thought, and discussion, I am not going down the rabbit 🐇 warren of research. I started, saw all the papers articles etc and ran backwards out of the hole in despair knowing I would end up going in all directions.
Why write a post about silence? The answer is probably why not? Plus it’s something I often ponder - why can silence be so powerful? Periods of silence are incredibly important to me, yet I go to sleep listening to audio books, often have #@ap tv on in the background in the evenings only for the noise.
Is it total silence I love or the ability to sit and listen for natural sounds? It is hard to sit in total silence. You can hear your breathing, dogs breathing, people talking outside, airplanes, cars, heating coming on and off, old buildings creaking, birds, rustling leaves. Sound is all around us. As my hearing deteriorates I am beginning to value noise more and my ability to capture sounds in my head.
Whilst I value silence around me, silence can communicate negative emotions. Loneliness and isolation, knowing people would rather remain silent than upset you with the truth, aggressive silence - not wanting to respond. Many psychologists have researched and produced papers on how we as human beings use silence. In 1972 novelist, poet, playwright, and psychotherapist Paul Goodman identified 9 kinds of silence in his classic book, Speaking and Language. The list is reproduced by Marcia Reynolds and does give food for thought around the power of how as human beings we use silence.
Sometimes silence in the middle of night has the opposite effect of calming us, our brains take the opportunity to seek out problems and magnify them into monsters. The morning arrives to shake us out of those thoughts.
Silence of all kinds provides me with opportunities to think about things, particularly my writing, have a rethink, recharge my batteries, use it to bring me back into the present and really listen to whether it is a truly silent time.
Should we understand how to use silence, and listening, properly with others? A question for you all.
I am going to stop here and leave a couple of possibly strange prompts.
Do you value silence or fear silence?
How do you find silence?
What, in your mind, us the difference between silence and peace & quiet.
Ok possibly one of the more eccentric and eclectic posts today but hopefully some good for thought. If you enjoy my posts please do subscribe, if you haven't already, my posts here are free to all.
I had to laugh when I started thinking about this, because I immediately realized that I never hear silence--because of the tinnitus I've had - for maybe 35 years. I normally am not aware of the constant buzzing sound, because my brain has trained itself to ignore...but I also suspect that it helps that there is almost always music on in our house, or I am listening to something--like audiobook, podcast, etc. or talking to someone on the phone, listening to TV, etc. I don't mind being "quiet" ie not talking or being alone--but thinking about this also made me realize that there are also almost always words in my head--the words I hear when reading, when writing, when thinking! So, while this didn't quite take me down the rabbit hole you opened up. It did cause some interesting revelations! So thanks.
Peace, clarity, necessary, essential, soothing were the first words that came to mind. I definitely need moments of peace every day. I meditate for 30 minutes daily around teatime and if I have to miss it for several days, I notice it as a kind of edginess in my skin 😒