I remember years ago when I was in high school how my dad would be so disgusted at my homework practices. I usually had the stereo blaring (before the days of iPods) with records or radio. He was certain I wasn’t giving my school work the concentration it needed. I would laugh, of course, assuring him I could concentrate much better with my tunes.
Now that I’m older, older than my dad was when he lectured the importance of concentration and focus, I get it. It seems I’ve developed a sensitivity to noise with my increasing age, especially artifical noise (natural noises like birds chirping or babbling brooks don’t count). I don’t want to have music constantly streaming through my head. I don’t want to have the TV on as background noise. I go completely out of my mind with noises the building makes at my day job, and seriously, what’s with white noise? It’s incessant and annoying. I don’t mind hearing people talk to each other in person, but to have to hear someone talking on their cell phone makes me positively insane. Sometimes I think I’m as bad as The Grinch when he complains about Christmas in Whoville with all the “noise noise noise noise!”
I wonder what it would be like to live with Harpo Marx. He didn’t speak. Nice and quiet, with a few exceptions of course.
When I’m home alone I usually don’t turn on music or TV for company. I don’t sing or hum to myself. I just enjoy the quiet ~ the quiet I can’t find anywhere else unless I’m completely alone. The stillness is like a soft pillow, the silence like a downy quilt. It’s cozy. It’s quiet.
Of course this isn’t to say I don’t want anyone speaking to me, or amongst themselves. I wouldn’t enjoy a world completely void of noise. But every once in a while I’ll turn it all off, think of Harpo, and remember how silence is indeed golden.
Silence is Golden magnet ~ available in my shop. Just click on the picture.
