Silence, Noise & Bliss
I’ve been like Anne of Green Gables over this blessed silence. Now it’s the second day of back-to-business, and the second day of chainsawing and wood splitting in the paddock next door. A full day of machinery noise with a half hour break for lunch.
Those thirty quiet minutes are bliss. Nothing but crickets, bird song and the papery rustle of autumn leaves. I lie in the hammock and rock in silence.
I remember the first time I felt true bliss. I was in my early twenties and, inexplicably, sitting cross-legged in front of the television. I don’t know what I was watching (it really isn’t relevant), but I remember that for about five whole seconds I was filled with a sense of everything being perfectly okay. Deep peace. It felt timeless, and endless, and then it was gone.
Most of my life thereafter was spent looking for that feeling again. I think everything after that was quietly measured against how close to, or far from, that feeling it might take me. What was it? Where did it come from, where did it go, and how do I find it again?
It was as if a deep well of silence had opened up inside my noisy mind. Which is exactly what had happened. The world continued on outside, the television maintained its drone, but something in me stilled. The silence was mine.
There are many ways to access it, lots of different names for it, and most everyone has felt it at least once. I think it’s probably what we’re all after.
The external silence and stillness we’ve been part of together reminds us of its mirror, within. It feels easier to access when we’re not part of a whirlwind. The only problem is that we don’t control what’s going on around us any more than we control the weather.
When I think about the external noise and quiet over the last four weeks, it is the first and last days which are most memorable. The sudden silence where once there was noise, and then noise returning into the silence I had grown used to. The contrast brought it to life; the edge where the two met. The silence shows up the noise, but the noise also amplifies the silence.
The sweetest quiet of all is the pocket that opens up in the midst of noise. Half an hour silence in a machine-driven day. A five second portal in the midst of a television show. A few short weeks in an otherwise noisy world.
Quiet itself is not bliss. Neither must noise equal misery. Bliss is different.
Trusting that our silence is there, knowing we can find it, understanding we don’t need the world to change in order to make it real, that’s where I’m pointing my nose right now. Living in the world—still, quiet.