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The Rebellion of Silence

It’s rather an odd quirk of the calendar that each January, we feel the need, or ability, to rewrite the scripts of our lives. Not that I think it’s a bad thing. But, really, January 1st isn’t the turning of the solstice from dark to light, or any “real” beginning of a new life cycle. The shift from the “old” to the “new” exists only in concept and the paper (or digital) calendar world.

Nevertheless, there’s something about the “new” year that makes us feel a stronger compulsion to clean out cluttered closets, sweep away some of the baggage that’s accumulated during the past year, and start afresh with desks and slates wiped clear, leaving us unlimited possibilities for reinvention. It’s why gyms are so overcrowded each January.

And even if those best intentions don’t last much beyond February (see one of my earlier posts on the difficulty of change, or browse a whole selection of posts related to the subject of change), taking time to think about what you’d LIKE to change is always a good exercise.

Taking time to think, of course, is one of the items many of us probably need to put on the list of things we need to change, or do more of, in the coming year. I’ve written on this subject before, at The Atlantic), but the writer Pico Iyer wrote a particularly good essay in the New Year’s Day edition of the New York Times that reinforced many of those same points. Titled “The Joy of Quiet,” the piece is well worth reading.

In truth, it perplexes me a bit that people have to pay extra for a room without electronic connections, or software to disable their “downtime eliminators” of email or internet access, in order to find that quiet time. In my case (although I don’t consider myself representative of the majority of people), my mind seems to seek that balance naturally; indeed, almost instinctively.

Over the past few months, as my life has gotten more burdened with tasks that distract my focus and pull me in too many directions already, I find myself less interested in keeping up with all the news and noise going on around me. Even if the newspaper is lying there, begging to be read, my email box is overflowing with requests for attention, and the whole internet lies at my fingertips, inviting me to wander lost for hours among all its data, I find myself with no desire to even turn the computer on, or to do anything more than scan the print headlines in front of me.

Instead, I find myself wanting to take a walk, or sit and watch the Christmas tree lights, or cook a good meal. Even writing becomes an annoyance, because at the core, my mind is pushing me toward what it knows it’s low on: the time and quiet to recharge, ponder, re-order, think, absorb, and do the mental garden preparation and fertilizing that then, eventually, will allow new ideas and words and productivity to sprout.

Perhaps my mind and body instinctively seek that corrective shift because I long ago not only came to peace with being alone with myself, in silence, but also, like Pico Iyer, came to really embrace and long for all the gifts that space and time allow me. But I still battle the #1 reason I suspect people pay extra for those hotel rooms and need to buy all that enforcement software. And that’s pure and simple guilt.

Some people who have to buy software to give them time away from constant connection may, in fact, be running away from themselves or terrified of the specter of being alone with nothing but their own thoughts. But I suspect–although, mind you, I have no scientific evidence or survey samples to prove this at the moment–that a greater number of those people need the software or special hotel rooms because then they have an excuse for disconnecting.  An external bit of self-control that allows them to overcome the guilt they would otherwise succumb to, by walking away from what everyone else seems to be pursuing.

I’m not entirely sure how it got this way, but certainly the people “in the know” and “in the news,” riding the crest of each new news item, trend, and cure-all innovation, are people almost obsessively connected to every blip in the information world, no matter how trivial or distracting it might turn out to be. Whether it’s the in-demand pundit, the up-and-coming artist, or toast-of-the-moment trendsetter, the people who seem to be on top of the “success” pile are those smack dab in the middle of the action. And the pace of that action, just like the news cycle, has become breathtakingly fast.

To step away from all that connectivity and striving, then, is to step away from being “in the center” of things; the one in the know, on the rise, or in the news. It’s acknowledging the possibility that someone scrambling harder to stay on the very edge of the wave is going to grab that shiny gold ring the TV show hosts are holding out–even if you know, on some level, that the there are a thousand more rings behind that one, all of which shine only momentarily before tarnishing. And even if you know that those gold rings aren’t important for being really happy, anyway. The fact remains that they’re still held out as the thing we all should want, and that makes them really hard to walk away from–even for a little while.

Why is there so much pressure to be on the cutting edge of every small and insignificant tweet, news item, trend or event? Part of the answer is undoubtedly the voracious appetite that an unlimited number of hours and media channels create for “new” items to talk about. But at the risk of sounding cynical, I suspect another piece of the equation is that a desire for simple silence, solitude, and time to think doesn’t create a need for nearly as many marketable items (aside from noise-cancelling headsets and expensive retreats and hotel rooms) as a desire to be on the cutting edge of information, fashion, technology or events.

And yet, as Pico Iyer quotes Henry David Thoreau as saing, “the man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important messages.” There’s an almost inescapable inverse relationship between quantity and quality, or depth and speed (hence the saying “still waters run deep.”). And perhaps even more importantly, as Iyer says media scholar and futurist Marshall McLuhan warned half a century ago, “When things come at you very fast, naturally you lose touch with yourself.”

What’s more, as Iyer also points out in his piece, some cutting edge successes actually come from people who consciously step away from all the connectedness that supposedly leads to being successful. After all, charting one’s own course in life doesn’t just mean finding a new way to get to the top of the success pile. Sometimes it means finding the courage to walk away from where the pack is headed.

Food for thought, in one of those quiet moments to think that you resolve to allow yourself, in the new year to come.

{ 2 comments… add one }
  • Reid January 16, 2012, 1:32 pm

    yep…tapping the brakes yields the most creative and fruitful thoughts, however, that is exactly what we the “sheeple” are encouraged not to do.

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