In Praise of Silence

I’m a big fan of quiet time. It’s not uncommon to find my house completely silent—no television, no music, no conversation. I turn off the TV after I get tired of listening to the morning news and, on days when I’m working at home, I don’t turn it on again until evening. In the meantime I read, write, make art, make lunch, go for a walk, run some errands, or make dinner.

Generally speaking, I keep my car quiet too. I have a 30 minute commute to work every weekday. Morning radio is almost always too offensive to even think about, except for NPR. But most of the time I’m not in the mood for that, either; I use my commute to gather my thoughts. On the way home, after hours spent talking to students and colleagues, my quiet car is the transitional space I need before I get home. When it’s just Mike and me, we have a “How was your day?” debriefing over dinner, then retreat to our private spaces for more quiet time. Our son, when he’s home, mostly enjoys time alone in his room. (Our daughter did the same, when she still lived with us.)

When I go for a walk or a run, I don’t wear headphones. I listen to the birds overhead, or the wind in the trees. Most of the time, though, I don’t really listen to anything. It’s the absence of sound that makes my time outdoors restorative. (At the gym, I prefer the noise I choose to the noise of those around me.)

There are moments when I want some background noise—times when I’m feeling a little lonely, and the sound of another human voice, whether I’m paying attention to it or not, is welcome. But much of the time, I prefer silence. Noise makes me physically uncomfortable. There are moments when I’ve turned off the TV or radio in a huff, the same way I might pull off a sweater with a scratchy seam that’s been driving me crazy all day. Silence is the only remedy for that kind of irritation.

We live in a world that puts very little emphasis on silence, though. Even noise-reducing headphones are intended to let you hear something else clearly. It’s almost impossible to find a place where noise doesn’t intrude on our thoughts. We’re certainly not encouraged to seek those places out. I grew up in a house where the television was turned on anytime someone was home–and turned up loud, because my dad was hard of hearing. When family members come to visit, they’re annoyed by the fact that I mute the TV when someone wants to have a conversation. Talking over the TV is normal to them. It’s unbearable for me.

I don’t know why we’re taught to think of silence as the absence of something, rather than the presence of something else. I suppose it’s similar to the way, driving through an area of wilderness, many people observe “There’s nothing out here!” There is, of course–there’s a whole ecosystem at work, a whole lot of something. It’s just not whatever they’re looking for.

I don’t know why we’re taught to be afraid of silence, either. I once asked my sister why she disliked a quiet house so much. “I suppose because it reminds me that I’m alone,” she said. But I don’t dislike being alone. I treasure time with myself, in exactly the same way I treasure time with the people I love.

This is hard for women to admit, though, because we’re socialized to be helpful to others. So being alone means being unhelpful–which might mean being selfish. That’s the cardinal sin of womankind.

But being alone could just as easily mean taking the time to value your own company. If your presence is helpful to others, after all, why shouldn’t it be helpful to you?

“It’s just so boring to be alone,” another friend says.

So maybe the problem is that we learn to expect others–present or broadcast–to keep us occupied. Maybe we haven’t learned how to fill silence with the something of ourselves. 

The quote from Mother Teresa at the top of this post reminds me that silence is essential to our growth as human beings. For me, that growth includes a spiritual component of prayer and meditation. even if you aren’t a person who participates in these practices, it’s easy enough to acknowledge that growth happens in silence. Trees start out as seeds underfoot and end up towering overhead. That growth doesn’t make any noise, but we can see that it happens. The year grows older and seasons change in a way that’s so quiet, we don’t even notice it until that change is well underway.

I think our growth as human beings happens in the same quiet way. The question is whether we’ll make room for that growth in our lives or if it will happen only by accident—in moments of epiphany just before we drift off to sleep, moments that sometimes feel like inspiration arriving from somewhere else. But in reality, those moments are just the product of giving ourselves the total something of ourselves.