Long, Deep Silence

Our world is noisy; we are bathed in communication throughout nearly all the minutes of our waking life.  We pay for smartphones that condition us like little pavlovian puppies to pay attention whenever they summon us.  Information provides us with the perspective necessary to make wise and informed actions, but it is also noise.

My wife and I were struck by an interview she found between a journalist named Pico Ayer and a biochemist turned Buddhist monk, one Mathieu Riccard.  Their entire conversation was a long advocacy for practicing stillness every single day.  Early in the discussion, Pico poses the thought experiment to the interviewer: Imagine spending 30 minutes every day being still and silent.  For some of us, even imagining such a thing inspires stress; for people who already feel overwhelmed by the exigencies of their to-do lists, committing half an hour to intentional idleness is almost an offensive proposition.  But it shouldn't be.

Our brains are organs, just like the rest of our body, and their functioning influences every aspect of our daily lives, perhaps more than any other part of our bodies.  They are the confluence of hormonal riptides, evolutionary imperatives, conditioned responses built from decades of life experience, all with an edifice of socially constructed knowledge and understandings built on top.  Our actions and choices grow out of this tangled mess of motivations.  Our only hope of taking hold of our life's direction is to engage meaningfully and willfully with the things that churn in our heads.

Often, the noises we populate our life experience with are purposeful distractions that help us avoid considering difficult or painful thoughts.  Sometimes we're so wrapped in distractions that we can't even acknowledge the scary monsters that make us afraid of silence.  But everyone has something to gain from reclaiming the mental space to be quiet and still, to listen to the stirrings in our mind, let them say their piece, and put them to rest.

It's not something that comes easy to many people.  It should be a practice.  But consider it an investment of time that yields tremendous dividends for your future peace and clarity.