How Silence Brings Satisfaction
20/06/2020 09:04
I think most of us would agree, modern day life has become so dominated by progress and achievement. By being efficient, productive and successful. ‘Crazy’, ‘busy’ and ‘frantic’ are words we often hear from friends or colleagues when we ask how they are doing. Imagine the reception you would get if instead you replied saying you were relaxed, content or had ‘just the right amount’ going on! Some people even describe their lives as being in the ‘rat race,’ said with a half-smile as if it is an achievement. This phrase actually originates from rat cages where rats were given a circular path to run on that led to nowhere but was an extremely exhausting endeavour.
The emphasis is firmly on doing, rather than being.
It’s a trap many of us fall into, myself included. I once thought that achievement and productivity were the key to happiness. Ticking off jobs on my to-do list, racing to complete multiple at once, and ending the day with exhaustion brought me a sense of satisfaction. I thought that was fulfilment. But more recently, I have shifted direction and found a new way to live. This was accelerated by a 10-day silent meditation retreat that had somehow found its way onto my ‘to-do’ list (I appreciate the irony here!) It taught me the value of slowing down, the peace in silence and how to enjoy the simple things in life. Lockdown has come at a good time for me and has certainly helped to reinforce these valuable lessons.
I read last year, well before Covid19 gripped the globe, that hobbies such as knitting, gardening and stacking wood are on the rise. Interesting. I think this shows that many people are craving simplicity and have a desire to turn to something basic, something authentic and to find peace in that.
Lockdown, it seems, has been the perfect opportunity that many of us were waiting for. It’s given us something so rare and precious in today’s world – time. Time to pause and reflect, time to be with our families, time to engage in new hobbies or interests. Even for those with kids running around at home, the absence of travel, social commitments and otherwise darting around from one place to the next, has left us with more time on our hands that we have had before.
So my question to you is what are you doing with that time? Are you filling each day with the same volume of activity? TV, work, cooking, reading, writing, exercising, chatting on Zoom, listening to podcasts….Are you dashing from one thing to the next, hoping to make the very most of the precious time you have now because who knows how long it will last? I don’t blame you if so. It’s what we’re used to after all. And there's nothing wrong with that. I’ve had days when I’ve been busier than ever. But I’ve also had periods of just sitting, watching the birds peck at my grass, listening to nothing but the wind, meditating, or just eating my lunch in silence, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
It’s bliss. For me, it’s what I needed to reconnect with the benefits of slowing down, just being with myself and appreciating the smaller things in life. While I once viewed silence as boring, empty and uncomfortable, I can now see it as a genuine opportunity to explore my own mind. It helps me to dissolve stress and worry and gain a new perspective on things. It allows my mind to wonder and imagine, and helps me to come up with new ideas that I would never have thought of otherwise. It helps my brain to process the day’s activities and to digest and compartmentalise all the different things going on. It closes some of the files that are open in my mind. It helps my body too. It brings my heart rate back to resting and relaxes my muscles which are typically tensed when typing on a laptop.
So, whether you are spending your days working, home-schooling, or just pottering around doing things you enjoy, I can fully advocate the power of silence, stillness and stopping everything else once in a while. I’m far from an expert and it’s a skill I’m constantly working on, but I am slowly starting to appreciate silence as a full and peaceful experience. An opportunity to open up my horizons. I now at least recognise that my life becomes much richer when I give time to doing nothing.
Give it a go. Let yourself be bored, frustrated and wonder why you’re doing it. But beyond that is something special and very worthwhile