Going into the Silence

“That’s one thing I hate! All the noise, noise, noise, noise!” ~ The Grinch

After seven days in an giant, old New Eng­land farm­house, we decided to stay in more economy-class accom­mo­da­tions for the last two nights of our vaca­tion as we moved up the coast and explored Freeport, Maine. I’m the only morn­ing per­son in my fam­ily, so with four kids and two adults in one hotel room, when I woke up before the sun, I grabbed my com­puter and headed down to the break­fast area which wasn’t even offi­cially opened yet. The lights were off, but they were start­ing to set up for breakfast.

I walked in, sat down, con­nected to WiFi and began my day while patiently wait­ing for fresh cof­fee and pre­cooked bacon. In my selec­tion of loca­tion, I picked the table far­thest away from the giant TV at one end of the room which was blar­ing The Weather Chan­nel.

As time ticked by, the break­fast buf­fet opened, and one other trav­eler entered the room. He sat down about two thirds of the way away from the TV, unfolded his USA Today and began read­ing. As I was more and more dis­tracted by the repet­i­tive boom­ing mete­o­ro­log­i­cal com­men­tary, I decided to act and turn down the vol­ume of the tele­vi­sion. I stood up and walked towards the TV, try­ing to make eye con­tact with my fel­low early bird until I passed him. Noth­ing. His head stayed down and focused on his paper.

I turned down the vol­ume, and when I turned around, the guy had his paper down, arms out stretched giv­ing me the “What the @#%!” look. So I said, “Do you mind if I turn that down?” Which by the way is what I did. It was down, not off. Still audi­ble. And there were only two of us in the room.

His response back, “Well, I’d like to be able to hear it.”

I wanted to say, “Why? They say the same thing over and over again every 8 min­utes. And you’re read­ing the paper.” But it seemed eas­ier and faster to reach back and click the vol­ume up a lit­tle which seemed to please him.

Within a week of that inci­dent I heard two pod­cast rants about how much noise there is in pub­lic places today. The first was on Rodrick on the Line, where John Rod­er­ick told of going to visit a friend and how this per­son kept the TV on as back­ground noise while they chat­ted. Mer­lin Mann chimed in about how much air­ports have changed and that there are no quiet spots to be alone in them any­more. Then, Clay Jenk­in­son on the Thomas Jef­fer­son hour was dis­cussing how Jef­fer­son man­aged to be so pro­duc­tive dur­ing his life. One secret was he spent a lot of time in soli­tude. Clay went on to describe how dif­fi­cult that is today echo­ing many of John and Merlin’s complaints.

Years ago, I heard Brian Tracy describe soli­tude as going into the silence. He’s a big believer in the magic of soli­tude. I started prac­tic­ing reg­u­lar, ded­i­cated time to silence: walk­ing, run­ning, just sit­ting alone with my thoughts. Over the years I’ve drifted away from that habit, and today, I live con­stantly among noise. I’m reg­u­larly updat­ing my run­ning playlist with fresh music. With my addic­tion to pod­casts, if I’m not sit­ting still or talk­ing to some­one, I’m lis­ten­ing to an episode. And I’m con­stantly online with some device eas­ily within reach.

It’s time to reverse that trend. The ideas, the solu­tions, the calm that come from doing noth­ing are won­der­ful, so here’s my game plan:

1. Sched­ule silence breaks. Three times a day (morn­ing, after­noon, and evening) I’ll take a 5–7 minute break of doing noth­ing. No read­ing, writ­ing or talk­ing. At the office, I’ll prob­a­bly go for a quick walk around the block.
2. Limit email scans. Turn off email noti­fi­ca­tions and check it when it works for me instead of con­stantly scan­ning what’s in the inbox. Same applies with check­ing sta­tus updates.
3. Eat alone. Once a week, go out to eat by myself with noth­ing to lis­ten to or to read. I know I’ll be sur­round by noise, but this will still pro­vide good think­ing time.
4. Once a year, go on a two-day or longer hike. Last year’s trip to the Nar­rows was mag­i­cal, and a big rea­son why was because of the solitude.

What about you? Is silent soli­tude impor­tant to you? If so, how do you carve out some time for it?