Do you remember the scene from the Grinch where he grumbles, “All the noise, noise, noise, noise?” I must confess, that phrase goes through my mind on frequent occasions. I am a lover of silence. Now, this can be a television on in the background, the air conditioner running too loudly to suit me, or (heaven forbid) someone try to strike up a conversation first thing in the morning. If I am around people who have trouble with silent moments, I leave feeling excessively overwhelmed, and sometimes a little agitated. There is something soothingly calm about the absence of noise. I call it the unmistakable beauty of silence.
01. The beauty of peace and thought process
There is a peacefulness that comes when sitting in the silence of a beautiful morning. The house is dark and calm and I can finally be alone with my thoughts. Do you ever just sit and listen to your thoughts? If you don’t stop and listen to them, how can you determine if they are a helpful thought or an unhelpful thought? Not all of our own thoughts are good for us.
One morning, as I sat in the gentle stillness of the quiet, I thought a particular thing. My mind wandered on, as it tends to do, jumping from one thought to another – one idea to the next. Suddenly, I caught myself thinking, “Why did I even think that? That is not a helpful thought about this situation.” Quickly, I was able to correct my own thinking and realign my heart.
In the quiet stillness, I was able to hear myself think, recognize the error of my thoughts, and reset what could have become the thought I dwelled upon all day. One unmistakable beauty of silence is the processing of thoughts in the peaceful quiet of the day.
02. The importance of keeping our words in check
We’ve been watching The Crown on Netflix. Realizing it is just a depiction of characters, I have learned so much about the importance of keeping our words in check. It is one thing a young Queen Elizabeth says again and again about the Monarchy: Her most important task is knowing when to remain silent.
I’m a bit of a type-A personality, and once you get me going, I tend to droll on and on. I expect you see that in my writing. But, and this is a very important interjection, there is a time when silence is truly golden. Not every comment is directed at us, nor does it require our response. Likewise, not every situation needs our guidance or knowledge. And, not every topic needs our comments or thoughts.
The ability to keep our words in check is an unmistakable beauty in silence. There are times when staying silent can save us rumination later on, in heated moments our silence can keep us from exploding an already heated conversation, and it can also give us time to weigh our words more carefully so we can process our thoughts and feelings more adequately.
03. The opportunity to see
I fear we have become a society that fears or ‘can’t stand silence.’ We fill it with mindless chatter, the television is on for background noise, or we fill it with long moments of endless scrolling. There is so much good to be found in silence. It quiets our minds. Silence comforts our hearts. It allows us to hear what needs to be heard.
If I’m not intentional about silencing the noise in my mind, I miss the little wonders all around me. While watering my balcony garden one morning, I could smell the mint and lavender as the water hit the foliage. I could see the blue gray clouds softly rolling in like a blanket of comfort and peace. I could hear the distant sound of a two-engine Cessna; the man I love was living his dream in those clouds.
And then I heard it: The first rustle of the leaves. I’m certain the leaves had been rustling all summer, but somehow, on this particular morning, paired with the tinkling of the watering can, I heard it. The soft soothing sound of the rustling leaves…. and I almost missed it because my mind wasn’t intentionally silenced.
One unmistakable beauty of silence is that when silence is intentional, it gives us the opportunity to ‘see.’ What else have I been missing? What have you been missing?
We say so often, “This year really flew by,” or “I don’t know where the time went,” or “I can’t believe it’s autumn already…” But the weeks and months and years are made up of singular, beautiful, wonderful moments. We just buzz past them on our way to the next thing, and in the buzz, we miss some pretty spectacular things. Ordinary things. Good things. Peaceful things.
There is unmistakable beauty in silence
Sometimes our thoughts run away with us when the world grows silent. There is a practice in meditation that trains the mind to recognize the silence, sit with its discomfort, and then learn to embrace it as a friend. When I first started sitting with the morning silence, my mind ran rampant with worries, words I’d spoken in haste, or behaviors I deemed untoward.
And so, in order to train my mind, I would sit in the silence, with my eyes closed. I would set a timer for one single minute. The next day, two. The following day, three. And so on and so forth until I could sit for five minutes in comfortable silence. Do you know what happened? Eventually my mind became acquainted with the silence, and now, I crave it daily.
There is an unmistakable beauty in the silent moments. The way we listen to a friend, process our own thoughts, or simply hear the rustling of the leaves.
Silence the noise in your mind, friend. Find for yourself the unmistakable beauty of silence.
xo, Billie
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