Silence is a powerful ally and a great strength, so how come few of us know how to deal with it?

I remembered a while back I read a book about silence and it intrigued me. But silence is all so hard to achieve. We live cramped one on top of another, our neighbors directly looking in our rooms. We get out and are surrounded by people, cars honking angrily and people talking. Suburban California is not an easy place to find the sanctuary of silence. We fidget if we have nothing to do more than a few seconds. The TV needs to be on, music has to be playing, we have to do something for fear of finding ourselves alone with ourselves.

I was lucky last Christmas to get my Bose sound canceling headsets. It has made a world of difference. They don’t completely turn off all sounds, much to my sadness. I wish there was something out there that would let you chose from complete silence to drowning out white noise. I think Sony has something like that.

I wear the headsets pretty much all the time. I meditate with them, I read wearing them and even play Sudoku with the pleasure of no trucking loud sounds disturbing my peace. I found it makes me enjoy silence and even enjoy doing nothing. Just looking around our fantastic Casa Grande apartment in quiet silence is peaceful. It re-centers me. I don’t rush anymore. I feel I step outside of life’s infernal imposed pace and can tolerate doing nothing again, being by myself. And this is the point where you find yourself at ease with yourself again with nothing to do. Just be with yourself in quietness. And when the time is right again, you pick up a book.

Silence is so great I enjoy every drop of it until I have to go out again. And guess what? I actually enjoy jumping back into the infernal noise polluted society outside. Go figure!