By Tommy Housworth
Last week, I found myself ranting at a gas pump. Not, perhaps, my most mindful moment of the holiday season. It wasn’t the price of gas or the speed at which the fuel was flowing that got to me. It was the fact that – after a long and noisier than usual workday – I wasn’t ready for a talking gas pump. A blaring, talking gas pump.
Perhaps you’ve encountered them, the screens on gas pumps that pounce like tigers, blasting ads the moment you start your transaction. While filling my tank isn’t a particularly calming experience, on this stressful day, I welcomed the promise of quiet that such a mundane moment might offer. Instead, I found myself going after pump #3 like a comedian who’d been heckled one too many times.
Once the storm settled, I realized that the gas pump wasn’t the chief antagonist here. Obtrusive and unnecessary? Probably. Another example of the ubiquitous encroachment of advertising into every moment of our lives? Definitely. But really, as is usually the case when I find myself frustrated, I had met the enemy and he was me.
I spend much of my life voluntarily surrounded by noise. I get up in the morning and before my coffee even brews, I’ve got NPR streaming on my phone. I take a walk, earbuds in, with music or an audiobook keeping me company. While I work, one of my 300+ Spotify playlists provides the musical wallpaper for my day. Even meditating, I may rely upon an ambient chime or a guided practice. I like to have something – anything – to fill the void.
If I were to play therapist on myself, I’d say I’m scared of what I might find if I spent more time dwelling in silence. Ghosts haunt my meditation on a regular basis – fear, loneliness, self-loathing… all monsters waiting for the noise to stop so they can slither out of the subconscious and onto the main stage. And of course, noise doesn’t come in solely through the ears. Social media, news articles, emails, texts, games, and all the other varied disruptors that capture our attention are, for many of us, pure head noise.
Yet I know that within the space of silence there is more. One of the Buddhist teachings refers to “the sonorous voice of silence” which, when heard, gives rise to wisdom. Yes, I know that peace and a sense of calm also await. Potentially, anyway. So I guess I can say that I simultaneously crave and dread silence. I don’t think I’m alone.
The holidays seem especially short on silence. The season itself – which now begins the day after Halloween, if not sooner – hosts a clamorous choir of advertising and bustle as the “attention economy” jockeys for our eyes and ears. The romantic and peaceful tableau of a hushed, snow-covered Main Street, accented by nothing more than birdsong or the lone knell of a solemn bell, exists mostly only in Hallmark movies or, if we’re old enough, in our soft focus memories. These days, the season seems mostly to rattle and hum.
I’m not a Grinch. I strive daily to be more George Bailey than Mr. Potter, more Cratchit than Scrooge. I’d just like to turn the volume down a bit on the noise outside my head and the self-inflicted tumult within. As the year draws to a close, I find myself craving a silent night.
For years, I slipped into the local Methodist church, my Buddhist beliefs humbly tucked inside my coat pocket, to sit for their annual December Taizé service. Taizé practice varies by denomination and culture; in this chapel, it was a mostly silent service with no sermon and very little talking at all. What sound there came from a pianist playing music so gentle one might’ve thought George Winston or Philip Glass had slipped in the back door.
In that darkened chapel illuminated only by candlelight, or at least those little battery-powered candles that mimic the modest glow of wick and wax, I found an experience both humble and holy. I felt ensconced in a hushed placidity that is mostly absent during the holidays and walked out renewed, as if a factory reset had been employed after too many days of head noise gnawing at my nervous system.
Afterward, the Christmas lights in town seemed to glow a bit more softly. The piped-in holiday music at the grocery store was less intrusive. “This,” I thought, “is what the season should feel like.” But before long, of course, the sheen of the moment wore off and I would find myself once again consumed by noise, both imposed and cheerfully chosen. My head in my phone, my ears swimming in music and talk, my mind pinging like a pinball.
But moments like those – and the ones I’m occasionally lucky enough to meet when I make myself sit down and sit still and notice my mind – assure me that the silence I simultaneously crave and dread is within reach if I make the choice to invite it in… and to stay with it. So I continue to show up on my cushion and reckon with silence.
It’s when I get off the cushion that the real dance begins. Can I navigate the rest of the day with silence as my co-pilot? Can I find ways to bring the noise in my world – and in my head – down to a manageable whisper? Can a silent night – or day, or moment, or two – help deliver true peace?
I’m counting on it.
