What Being At Peace With Silence Truly Means
The unusual company I learned to befriend during quarantine is the one that I have long neglected: silence.
I’ve always considered the absence of sound as a missed opportunity or a time not well spent. Whenever my ears are free, I feel the need to stimulate them with sound. Background silence or even the simple daily noise of the AC buzzing, the rustling of leaves, or the water on the lawn sprinkling — not only doesn’t work for me — but they also seem awkward. Why so quiet?!
- Why just commute when you can also listen to the radio?
- Why just go to the groceries and not play that Spotify playlist?
- Why just study when you can also set lofi-hip hop as background music?
Well, that was before the pandemic, back when the world was increasingly becoming busier. I’ve always felt that not keeping my ears engaged is a bastardization of my sense of hearing. I have two ears so I better use them!
And so I carried the habit into the lockdown and isolation period. Washing the dishes, doing house chores, taking a bath, working out, sleeping — basically anything that doesn’t require cognitive function. My ears would always end up being filled in by an audio device.
But for something that used to bring me comfort and ease my boredom, I lately started feeling distracted and overwhelmed for anything audio. And for someone who draws entertainment and relaxation for the things I listen to, how can sound end up rattling me up?
It took me a long time to realize that it was not the podcast, or top 20 hit songs, or fake rain sound, that add anxiety or irritation to an already disturbing period. It was my obsessive avoidance of silence.
I was overstimulated already. What my running thoughts needed was a vacuum from everything. But what I ended up doing is never giving my ears a break; I keep on filling up every single period in my 24 hours with more sound. No window for silence to exist!
- Sick beats and hype music during workouts.
- Radio in the background while doing house chores.
- Solo concerts in the bathroom.
- And even down to bedtime, why not play relaxing hypnosis or that sleepy-time soft-spoken podcast?
It’s as if I was afraid of silence.
Because while keeping the music on could shush away unnecessary thoughts then if you play non-stop, those thoughts would never have the chance to be processed or just simply float out. And it’s interesting to find out that there’s a science behind this. One study about the actual physiological benefits of a couple of minutes of silence explains how this could relieve tension in the body and brain. Silence can reduce heart rate, blood circulation in the brain, and respiratory minute ventilation. It even concludes that it is more relaxing than listening to music.
A brain that is restless just needs to pause. And so I pressed pause to every sound, even just for a while.
Every day, I allow myself five or ten undisturbed minutes (or even more) of just sitting, drinking my coffee, and hearing nothing but my sipping. My, my, I never knew the sound of sipping can be therapeutic.
Silence has these negative connotations — curtailing freedoms, ghost stories, boredom, and unproductive hours. Silence has always been the most unfairly treated friend; we always keep it away from us. What did it ever do to us to deserve this? But silence IS a friend. It has always been there.
We just need to allow silence to exist. Embrace it. And it will comfort you back.
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Andrew Beso is a Manila-based content creator exploring different ways of sharing art — whether it be written, spoken, and visualized. Aside from being in Medium, his work can also be seen on Youtube, Instagram, and Tiktok. All his creative expressions use varying styles, lenses, and mediums of storytelling.
