When I came home early Friday afternoon, I sensed that something was wrong. My husband greeted me as normal and Roo did his best to coat me with an extra layer of warm fur. Normal, but still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. About two hours, a bottle of Stella and a trip to the taco truck later, it hit me: it was quiet.

And it was good.

There were no heart-thumping beats or soul-stirring steel guitar riffs blaring from the radio, nor the sound of going-for-broke radio DJs preparing for a three-day bender.  The TV sat quietly, unable to regale me with tales of pounds lost and hearts won. Even the clicking and tapping of a keyboard that can typically be heard in our household were suspiciously silent.

Again, it felt good.

Dad and son taking a nap
Silence is becoming a luxury—the kind it’s still okay to want. Silence lets you rest and reset, ponder and pontificate. The ideas that seem just beyond your mental grasp the rest of the day float effortlessly into your mind. And the world slows down, perhaps by just a few seconds, but enough to catch your breath.

In silence, no one is calling you to be comforted, IM alerts aren’t warning of impending doom (the news is never as bad as you imagine it will be, is it?), and no one is telling that you need something more in your life to be good looking enough, smart enough, or funny enough. In silence, you can be complete.

I love listening to music, the cheesier the better. (Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam have lifted me out of despair more than once.)  But when art becomes background noise, an evening (or an hour) of silence can restore some balance. Of course, it’s not always that easy, is it? If I learned nothing else from spending three years living with chatty roommates, it’s this: silence isn’t a right, but it is worth fighting for.

Find a Moment of Silence in Your Day

  • Take the long way home on your commute.
  • Try noise cancelling headphones. (I can’t say I’ve tried these, but I’m oddly fascinated by them. They turn the rest of the world into your own personal mimes!)
  • Turn off the telephone ringer, for just a few minutes if that’s all you can manage.
  • Take a bath and let your ears stay underwater.
  • Stop trying to accomplish everything during your children’s nap time, at least for a day.
  • Hide the remotes and act innocent. (I’m only 90% kidding…)
  • Keep the sound off on your computer or game until it’s truly essential.
  • Hide in the bathroom. (Dude, it works.)
  • Try watching TV on mute. Sometimes background images are all we need to keep a room from feeling empty.
  • Institute meditation hour and reward unwilling participants with a favor. Or chocolate.
  • Load just one disc into your CD player or a shorter playlist on your mp3 player. Let the tracks run out and see if you even notice.
  • Sit in your parked car in the garage and let yourself relax.
  • Ask your partner or roommate to tell you the three most important things from their day. This can help you stay connected while keeping you from drowning in the minutia of their daily interactions (”and then there was this other guy, and he sat next to me, but I didn’t talk to him, and then I walked to the Coke machine and they were totally out of Coke…”).

What do you do to find silence? Is silence a universal need? Let me know what you think the comments.

Creative Commons License photo credit: lepiaf.geo

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