Rarely, if ever, am I encompassed by
complete
absolute
silence.
It’s hard to find these days. Whether it’s the drone of a TV, the patter of my neighbor’s feet on the floor of the apartment above me, traffic on the street, music coming from my laptop’s speakers, there are nearly always things around breaking the silence.
Truth be told, I’m often the one to break my own silence. There’s something slightly unnerving about the total lack of sound. Perhaps it’s my fear of a noise I deem creepy being the thing that breaks it, or perhaps I’m just so unused to it that I don’t know what to do with it.
The fact that I love music only adds to it. Many of my waking hours are filled with music notes of varying kinds. Not that music is bad…I honestly don’t know what I’d do without it. Sometimes it seems like the only thing capable of expressing the way I feel. But it is not the same as silence.
Peace and silence seem to go hand in hand. Maybe because true silence is usually found in nature, and nature can be very peaceful.
There is an element of intimidation in silence as well. Everything is stripped away, and we are left with the absolute lack of noise. Even little noises, like the hum of a light bulb, can be distracting. Silence lacks any chance of a distraction. It is only me, and my thoughts. Thoughts come with their own noise, but it is different than the audible kind.
For whatever reason, I find myself desiring silence. It seems that if I could find silence, maybe my noisy thoughts would soon fall in line and be quiet as well. Or perhaps they’d become louder, but in that loudness begin to make sense. Maybe being just with my thoughts, with no other audio interruptions, would be too much for me to handle. I’m not really sure.
Unfortunately, the odds of me being able to find out don’t seem very good. Perhaps absolute silence doesn’t even truly exist. Outdoors seems the most logical place to look for it, but even in that I’m sure I would hear leaves rustling, or maybe the sounds of water or animals. Silence is elusive. It’s not as though I can find an audio track of nothing and turn it up until it drowns out everything else. The idea of that though–of being able to turn up the silence…that sounds quite nice.
Til next time…
~Brianna!~
The Art of Becoming 