Weatherwise, it is in the ordinary Pacific Northwest day. It is gloomy and over cast but with an unseasonable chill in the air. The sky is threatening to rain but hasn’t lived up to its promise in any significant way.
But there is a strange sense of gloom that isn’t just about the weather. There’s something in the air that I cannot quite put my finger on but I feel it in my arthritic bones. It’s a weird sense of disturbing quiet despite the absolute silence.
It is now half past noon and I’m feeling uncharacteristically lazy. My morning tea has long gone cold and for some odd reason I skipped eating breakfast. I don’t feel depressed or ill — I feel depleted.
Perhaps it was the hours that I spent working in the garden yesterday without finishing up the backyard. Or perhaps it’s my body telling me to slow down and take a break. I’m not feeling very motivated today. I haven’t turn on any music, an audiobook, or condescended to turning on the television and watching the news.
It doesn’t seem like the ordinary fatigue that I feel after a long day’s work. It feels more like when you were a child and you told your mother “I don’t want to go to school today.”
I don’t feel depressed or down in anyway but in a strange way I’m relishing the quiet and silence with exception of the occasional passing car or the various sirens coming from the naval shipyard.
Perhaps what it is is that I just needed to fast from the noise and chatter of the unnecessary. I remember reading a psychologist who had said that as a culture we have become unaccustomed to silence, quiet, and stillness. We are almost expected to be distracted by various forms chatter, media and noisy activities. He said that boredom is the brain’s way of resetting itself. We have become unaccustomed to lack of chattering noise.
We turn on the music, we turn on the television, and we drown our brains with the noise, a podcast or audiobooks. Anything that breaks the silence. Why are we so afraid to be alone with our own selves, in our own space, and in quiet solitude?
On one hand, I’ve used this quiet and solitude to write this particular perspective. On the other hand, it feels a bit by complaining to the existential void and expecting it to reply with a philosophical explanation which won’t happen, now or ever.
It could also be that my subconscious is simply seeking a reset. Whatever it is, it’s time for a second cup of tea and a simple light lunch. It’s time for part two of an uneventful day. But I don’t intend to make the second half of this day as unproductive as the first half.
Rather, I’ll try to create something. Either an article or work on one of my paintings. Or perhaps take a long walk under the Northwest gloomy skies and dream up new ideas for future articles.
Whatever the case is, it’s time to get moving. So I’ll say goodbye for right now and don’t let the silence and solitude darken your day. Many ideas are born in absolute silence.
Leave a Reply