We live in a world allergic to silence. It makes us itchy and uncomfortable and running towards any dose of sensory medicine available. I am not exempt from this statement. The first thing I do in the morning is pry open my bloodshot eyes and reach for my Claritin for the relief of my actual allergies. The second thing I do is turn on music for the unconscious assistance of my silence sensitivity. This playing of music continues through showering, getting dressed, relaxing after work, reading, cooking, writing, and is even a necessary for falling asleep at night. My penchant for making sure my day comes with it’s own accompanying soundtrack restricts the amount of time I spend in the quiet of my surroundings. However, paradoxically, it is also the only respite from the constant chatter within my own head.
My head is far from serene. I imagine my brain to be like a traveler watching the giant updating time board at Grand Central Station. Sometimes, the traveler has the luxury of their train being on time and can comfortably embrace the energy of the hectic station. This could lead to shamelessly people watching while simultaneously creating stories about who they are and where they are going or stopping to notice the trumpeter playing in the far corner. Other times, the traveler arrives to the station only to realize their train has already left ten minutes ago. This leads to the traveler scrambling to book a new train, tripping over masses of luggage, and trying to figure out how this mistake was made in the first place. And yet still, sometimes this traveler arrives to find that their train had been delayed for four hours. This leads to figuring out the effect of the scheduling change on future plans and trying to stay occupied for newly acquired extra hours. Just like the traveler, my brain, whether calm or frenzied, seems to always be in a noisy environment, constantly switching between past, present, and future events dependent upon the surrounding circumstances. One minute I could be thinking about how I need to send a birthday card to a friend back home, who happens to currently be attending nursing school, and the next thing I know I’m thinking about how I need to figure out where I am going to take my health science pre-requisite courses once I return to the States and trying to figure out how I am going to pay for those classes seeing that I have volunteered for the past two years. The most obvious next stream of consciousness is of course then remembering how I tripped over a cord after jumping off my cousin’s bed when I seven and slammed my head into the back of a radiator and wondering if I have a huge scar on the back of my head and what I would look like if I was bald.
When I listen to music, however, this all stops. As the tune enters my ears and the lyrics being to build, my mind becomes blank. Actually, not completely blank. It was not until recently that I realized that when I actively listen to music, I involuntarily picture a dancer on a stage as my mind’s eye crafts choreography for the accompanying melody. Most often, my imaginary dancer spins and twirls to an emotionally charged lyrical dance as a product of the mostly indie music I listen to. Ironically, lyrical dance is just about the only type of dance I have never done in my twenty yearlong dance history. So as I listen to music, I relinquish myself to this performance, stilling my own physical body and mind.
It was not until my silent retreat last May as a domestic Good Shepherd Volunteer that I realized how much I listen to music in a day. On our retreat, which lasted for two and a half days, we were not allowed our cell phones, music devices, computers, or books, unless they were of a spiritual nature. We were to stay silent through the entirety of the weekend, including mealtimes. 60 hours of complete silence. You know how when someone tells you that you cannot do something that the desire to actually do that thing becomes increasingly attractive? Well within ten minutes of commencing our silent retreat I NEEDED to talk to someone. I didn’t just need to talk to someone; the words were palpably forming at the base of my throat waiting for my determination to stay silent to dissipate. Clearly I have stayed silent for more than ten minutes in the span of my twenty-three year life. If you need any reminding, I am the girl that took seven and a half months to tell her seventh grade Latin teacher that her name was not in fact Brick-id. But the necessity to talk at this moment was so strong. To take my mind off of this fervent yearning to talk, I headed to my bedroom for that weekend and decided to write some thank you letters to some individuals I had been meaning to write to over the past year. But as soon as I put my pen to the paper, I realized just how quiet it was in that tiny 4x10 bedroom with it’s complementary rosary set and wooden kneeler. My desire to talk was soon surpassed by my need to listen to music. I knew I listened to music a lot in my day but I don’t think I realized how much until it was taken away. Brushing my teeth was eerily quiet as was going to bed at night. So of course my mind went into overdrive to fill in these spaces.
I don’t think my mind has ever been louder than on a weekend where I was supposed to submit myself to complete silence. On the evening on the first full day, I told this to my spiritual director in our advising session, the only thirty minutes of the weekend we could speak. She suggested that I take a piece of paper and close my eyes. With my left hand, I was to take the pen in any motions I felt driven to make, such as loops, or circles, or lines. The only stipulation was that I could not pick up the pen, I needed to try and cover the entire paper, and I could not look. When I was finished, I was to cover in every single piece of the picture I had created.
So with my homework assignment, a piece of paper, a clipboard, and a box of markers, I headed to the front lawn of the Jesuit retreat center, appropriately right under the feet of a statue of Jesus. And there I sat, coloring each crevice and crack and curve of my drawing. Focusing on the picture, I was not able to completely quiet my mind, but I was able to have my thoughts flow through freely, not fighting them but also not giving them the chance to be pondered over. The need to fill the quiet spaces, with speaking or music, became less desirable and at the end of the retreat I was actually not ready to give up this newfound silence. Sometimes quiet is the essential element in discerning what is most important in life.
My love of music, however, trumped this new discovery and I was back to listening music on the way from New Jersey back to Baltimore. Since coming to Thailand, I have recognized the ways in which I use music as a way to fill silence, as a way to create silence, and as an escape. One of my favorite times in my day is when I come home from work and just lay on my bed for about twenty minutes listening to music. I’m a musical person; I cannot help that. However, in an effort to try and limit the times I am using music as a way to avoid thoughts and concerns, I have started recently to tap into some of the things that helped me on the silent retreat to embrace silence as an understanding friend not as a socially awkward acquaintance.
One of the four tenants of Good Shepherd Volunteers is simplicity and while this does pertain to that fact that I live off of a stipend of about $95 USD a month, simplicity here in Nong Khai has more so been embodied by simplicity of time and thoughts. Living without the Internet, my life has been free of many distractions brought on by usual ever-present technology. While my life has definitely been made simpler without constantly being in tune with the happenings of friends and acquaintances all around the world due to the world of social media, more importantly, my life has been made simpler in action. I have spent a lot of my time reading here and am currently on my 26th book in the 32 weeks of being in Thailand. More recently, I have gotten quite into podcasts and spend a lot of my nights listening to episodes from shows such as TED Talks and On Being with Krista Tippett. However, since deciding to become more intentional on just being okay with stillness and as a way to connect more with the culture in which I am living, I have been trying out some new things such as meditation and coloring in mandalas, which are circular depictions that are used in a lot of Buddhist cultures. So far I have more luck with the coloring at being able to just let my thoughts flow than with the meditation, even though in the guided meditations I have downloaded the leader loves to remind me “don’t mind your thoughts, just let them go the way they come; it doesn’t matter”. Some how her saying that makes me think of more random thoughts than if she didn’t remind me that I wasn’t supposed to be thinking. Needless to say, meditating is going really well.
But, I told my coworker Bon that I would go to an all night Buddhist meditation (non-guided… just me and my free flowing thoughts coming out the way they came in) this month. She asked me in Thai and I was a little confused by one of the words and thought we were only going to be going to visit a temple, but nope. I committed to being a monk for a night. But how could I not, Bon tells me every day in her cute very non-fluent English, “Thank you for you”. I mean come on. How could I not? So I better start practicing. Do they sell Claritin for silence allergies? Benadryl, maybe? EndFragment
