Cadence of Silence

It’s odd we don’t think it’s odd that we regard silence as deficient and not as full. 

We fill the air with talk, music, sports, news and weather updates until we fall exhausted into bed, the sounds of the day still ringing in our heads. Yet we feel unsatisfied because we’ve heard little that we want to remember. We feel empty. In the manner of the Quakers, we should remain silent until we have something important to say.

Words and music have powerful influences on us. If we listen to talk radio or music throughout the day, it’s no wonder we feel exhausted. We hear so many opinions that we don’t know what we think. Every song has a specific emotion, and every five minutes we’re pulled into a different one. After a while, we’ve lost track of what we’re feeling.

We need to sit in a quiet place to know what’s on our minds and hearts.

We need to let go of our preoccupations. Stop thinking about the future and let go of the past. Each day we need time to exist just in this moment. Find out what concerns are troubling us. We need to step back and laugh at some of the things we obsess about that don’t matter, and let them go. We are amazing as we are.

But we don’t. If we are tired, we put on happy music to charge us up, or open an energy drink, instead of dealing with why we feel tired. Music becomes another drug we take to cope with reality.

The sounds of the city shoulder each other out of the way as they fight to get our attention. The billboards. Commercials. The political ads. Their shouting escalates into a din, and teaches us not to listen to what’s going on around us.

When I listen to the natural world, I hear the cadence of silence.

Sometimes when I’m chatting with friends, it’s like being on a train. A word is said that draws my attention to something on the side of our conversation, outside the window, but the train of conversation keeps going straight ahead, and the opening to something deeper slips away.

It can be unsettling to be home without the sounds of the TV, radio, or music filling the rooms. We hear the sounds of the house — the refrigerator clicking on, the roof creaking in the wind, a strange hum that comes from an unknown place, and we wonder if something is about to blow up. We realize how seldom we just sit and listen to the environment around us.

One of the reasons I go camping is to give my ears a chance to rest.

It takes a couple of days after I arrive outdoors before I can hear nature’s softer voices. It also takes time for the surface chatter in my head to quiet. Sitting on the side of a mountain listening to the wind move over the land, I begin to hear the thoughts and feelings that are moving underneath my surface.

At night, I walk into the meadow and drink in the quiet of the dark. I sip the silence of the stars like wine.