Perhaps more than ever before, it has become necessary to
speak up in praise of silence, as an attempt to redress the
balance in a cacophonic contemporary culture that appears
suspicious of outright contemptuous silence. Living as we
do, in the busyness of this modern world - hooked up, beeping
and under the false imperative of needing to keep in touch with
everything - we find ourselves in the unhealthy situation of
losing our silences and the sustenance that comes with them.
So we desperately rush, hurling ourselves from one activity
to the next, without ever pausing to dilute the concentration
of our experience with reflection.
...erosion of silence in our lives is unmistakably connected
with our noise-ravaged nerves, of increased stress levels, as
well as increasingly shortened attention spans, which affects
our ability to both think and feel deeply in order to sift through
the deluge of stimulus that informs our hurried and harried days.
Previously a portal to silence, the culture of reading is currently
imperiled in favor of "information snacking" to accommodate
our hectic schedules. This coupled with the media's shrill and
insistent competition for our attention, makes it necessary to
guard our silences even more vigilantly.
If French philosopher Blaise Pascal is correct, that all of
humanity's problem stem from man's inability to sit quietly in
a room alone,' then the proliferation of talk and reality shows
may be seen as symptomatic of our cultural malaise. Namely,
reality shows, which actually serve to distract us from reality,
or being present to ourselves, are precisely a reflection of
our collective 'inability to sit quietly in a room alone.'
.....noise too can be the absence of sound. Noise is the silent
invasion of our inner space by the clutter of undigested
information and unsorted emotions that pile up throughout
the days and weeks. With our private spaces thus encroached
upon, we risk becoming alienated from ourselves until our
lives are something foreign to us. Against the odds, of what at
times appears to be a conspiracy of noise, we must try to assert
our birthright to retreat, reflect, and regenerate.
Solitude tends to produce an understanding of our own
limitations, and forces us to seek our own counsel in dealing
with them.
Yet, silence, like any controlled substance, must be handled with
care. Initiates, or masters of silence - such as solitaries, thinkers,
monks, hermits, and ascetics - have long known how to mine it
for fortitude and insight, or to arrive at ecstasis. But it is up to
each individual to determine how much is desirable and useful...
Just as the monastery and institutionalized silence are not for
everyone, so too extended travels to the foreign land of silence
are not for tourists. Striking out fearlessly into interior territories
is not for dilettantes, or those less practiced with deeper
experiences of prolonged silence...
The aim, then, is to try to find that healthy balance - between
silent fasts and noise feasts...
Yahia Lababidi
Excerpts from an article
called
"Notes on Silence"
With thanks to No Mind's Land
~
Photo - Mystic Meandering
