Silence

Take just a moment. One moment out of your day, and turn off the stereo, turn off the television, turn off the beeps and hums of modern day technology. Open a window if it’s not too cold. You hear it? You may have to listen close. It’s under the rumble of cars, the buzz of heaters, the whir of fans, and the shouts of people. You hear it now? I hope so. It’s nature. It’s been a long time since I’ve been out in it, possibly a lot longer than you have, but even I have to admit, there’s a real value in the silence and calm of nature.

A while ago, I heard that there was a man who would make recordings of uninterrupted nature noises. His goal was to get one hour of noises without interruption, in a continuous fashion. Now, I don’t know the exact statistics, but he was asked how long it took him to get a full hour and he responded around fifty hours of recording. When asked a few years later, he responded it could take up to three hundred hours.

Now, I’m not a tree hugger by any means, but I do believe in the value of a communal relationship with nature. We, as a species, need to be careful to protect and nurture the world around us, and it wouldn’t hurt us to turn off our devices and just sit back, enjoying the silence and calm of the world around us. So, instead of looking for something else to fill the void we call silence, embrace it and look for the peace and gentle calm inside it.