Lessons on Silence

photograph by Yoann Boyer via unsplash

I’ve been avoiding silence lately. More than usual. I’m becoming, or have already become, one of those people who leaves the television on for sound, who always has a podcast in her ears, who never drives without the radio. I don’t like this. It’s not how I think of myself, and it’s not in keeping with what I believe to be healthy, i.e., periods of noiselessness, of un-stimulation, of space. Life as mere stitches of activity in a fabric of quiet.

There’s no mystery here: I’ve been avoiding silence because silence sometimes feels too urgently lonely. Like, without stimulation, an antsy solitude might rush in and take up all the space. The kind of solitude that highlights the worst of your itchy, niggling thoughts.

I do a lot of thinking. As a mom, as a writer, and as a curious, introspective person by nature. Normally I like my thoughts. I settle happily into mind-space and tinker, piddle around, play, see what I can find or make.

But I also know that wandering alone through the city of the mind can be dicey; there are haunted alleys and whole miles without street lamps. There are old demons and old wounds and old worries that spring like muggers from shadowed doorways, demanding you hand over something precious — self-confidence, maybe, or joy.

It’s been a hard year. No, a long year. No, a good year. Well, all of the above. Complex. A…