Making Room for Silence
I found myself feeling a little envious during the program on "Hearing the Silence." I wanted to be kayaking on that lake listening to the loons, or sitting in that meadow hearing the stream water rushing over the rocks. The soundtrack of my life is nothing like that. Timberly described what I listen to all the time in her introduction -- car alarms, sirens, chattering voices -- the opposite of silence.
I could do very well without all the noise pollution of city life. I know people who turn on the TV the minute they come into their house and have music on all the other times. I watch our godsons work at their computers while they are listening to music on their ipods. I can't work with any background noise. My head can't multitask in that way.
Cultures that live closer to the natural world, observes Bernie Krause, maintain a better balance among hearing, feeling, touching, and seeing. It does seem that finding a remote spot far from civilization is a first step in making room for silence. But I can't do that today, so I have to find silence spots right where I am.
I can incorporate minutes of silence into my daily routine. I sometimes do that while the computer is booting up in the morning. Instead of getting impatient as the system goes through all its checks, I close my eyes and am quiet, listening to the simple sounds in the room. Fred and I often eat a meal in silence, like the monks do at a monastery we visited. We find this helps us concentrate on the taste of the food and engenders a feeling of gratitude for the many blessings in our lives. And tonight, after I turn off the TV following the evening news, I will have a moment of silence in memory of all the people who have died during and after Hurricane Katrina.