Connecting to Each Other: Practice Silence Part 2
Practicing silence can do so much to heal us and make us whole as individuals, and as a society. But this is the thing: Silence is hard to come by-especially these days and in this culture! There is so much noise inside and outside of our heads. We live in a culture that commodifies everything and bombards us with noise that distracts us from our hearts and the hearts of others: social media, traditional media, advertisement, sports, and on and on.
We spend our time staring at our phones, subjecting our spirits more than necessary to the minute-by-minute bad news blaring from the tv that always seems to be on even if no one is sitting and watching. We obsess over the latest car we can buy. We worry about the fate of an athlete’s sprained ankle convinced that it will affect our lives deeply. We listen mindlessly to tv ads yelling at us to buy next season’s clothes or shop this sale or that-lest we miss out on the best bargain of our lifetimes. We stew over the latest Facebook posts of a friend’s perfect DIY/Container Store “work from home set-up” and their perfect, daily, made-from-scratch pandemic meals, while feeling deep shame and anger that we can barely roll out of bed in the morning.
In no way am I saying that technology, material goods, news, and sports are bad (after all I’m a big Celtics fan). Of course, we need to know what is happening in the world. We need to know that there is a clothing sale because our 8-year old just outgrew the shorts we bought two weeks ago or our dishwasher just washed its last dish. Maybe our friend’s perfectly appointed desk can be an inspiration for a storage solution we’ve been dealing with for months.
It is when the noise of our culture drowns out silence and our capacity or ability to notice and to care about the visibility of others, that we lose our way. It is when the noise of our culture leads us to believe that everyone else is a competitor or a threat. It leads us to believe that people are the car they drive, the clothes they wear, the house they live in, or the school their kids attend. We see people as being the anger they express and stop relating to them as fellow human beings. They are just problems to solve or ignore. They become objects that deserve punishment, abuse, and our derision. In other words, other people become “less-thans” who deserve their struggles or whatever problems they may experience. The noise may prevent us from seeing striving, struggling human beings, who just like us, want to experience safety and dignity in the world.
When our heads are filled with noise, we see people as deserving and underserving based on the clothes they wear, the cars they drive, the neighborhoods they live in, the jobs they have (or do not have), the language they speak, and even the pigmentation of their skins. All of this cultural noise pushes out the silence. It pushes out the pause that lets us stop for a moment and really take in our humanity, a stranger’s humanity. It pushes away the opportunity to connect with our hearts, our pure being, and that of others. The noise pushes away our ability to take in the news of injustice and the compassion we would normally have for other human beings suffering. For example, how do we take in the fact that over 200,000 human beings-in the country alone-have died from Covid-19? How does the magnitude of this sorrow enter into our hearts?
Sometimes we might turn toward the noise to tune out the pain. Distracted by the noise, we don’t have to hear the sound of seven bullets entering into a man’s back – just because he walked –not ran– away from the police. We don’t have to think about desperate mothers and fathers fleeing their countries only to be separated from their children and sent to live on concrete warehouse floors with no access to toothbrushes because our government says they don’t need them. The noise lets us think that these bad things happen to people who brought the problems onto themselves. The noise absolves us of our responsibility to care for those who have less than we do it is easier to accept the noise and the false “peace” it brings. We start to think that constant noise is the way things should be, the way things have to be.
To find silence these days, you have to deliberately choose it. You have to want it. If you are not deliberate, you won’t find it. There is always an entertaining show to watch (my favorite right now is All-American), a great sale at Best Buy or LLBean. Facebook and Insta always beckon, and corporate media news is ever-present. When you find that quiet and the heart space it opens, it takes a little bit of getting used to. But then you do start to treasure it. You begin to notice how silence can call you into connection with other beings.
Be well,
Bill
P.S. Stay tuned for our next Care of Soul where we share how to practice silence in this noisy world.