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It’s pretty obvious that we live in a terribly noisy world and it seems to be getting worse by the day. Wherever we go, we are beset by loud and unwanted sounds. When we enter elevators, shopping centers and restaurants, the musak engulfs us. I recently had lunch at a popular restaurant and found the background music so loud that it interfered with normal conversation and the enjoyment of my lunch. When I asked the waitress if she could turn the music off, or at least turn it down, she said, “I don’t think we can.” Surely we as a people are still in charge of the volume controls.
When you add lawn mowers, snow blowers, leaf blowers, jackhammers, jet engines, transport trucks, and horns and buzzers of every description and description, you have a wall of constant noise and irritation. Even when he watches a TV show at a reasonable volume level, she gasps when a commercial comes on at the decibel level of an airplane.
It seems that we have created a cultural acceptance of our noisy world even though it is making us physically and psychologically sick. It seems we can’t live without background noise. We have friends who turn on the TV the moment they wake up in the morning and leave it on all day. The house is too quiet if it’s not on. Former high school students of mine used to tell me that the first thing they did when they got home from school was to turn their CD player on as loud as their parents would tolerate.
Cornell University recently conducted a study to determine the impact of noise on employees in an open area office space where people are constantly exposed to fax machines, telephones, office chatter, shredding machines, etc. Test results revealed that workers in an open area had high levels of adrenaline in their urine. The body releases adrenaline when it is under stress. It prepares us for fight or flight. When these employees were compared to those in the freestanding office spaces, the results were just beginning. People in a quiet, independent work area did not have the same high levels of adrenaline in their urine. They were much more relaxed and less stressed.
Both sets of employees were given a puzzle that required attention and concentration. The open area group was found to be less diligent in solving the puzzle, easily frustrated, and giving up much sooner than the quiet office group. The study also found that workers in the quiet office slept better at night, had better digestion, were much less irritable at home, and felt better at the end of their workday than workers in the open-concept office. Noise appears to affect focus, productivity, and general physical and psychological well-being. Noise tends to increase stress levels, which in turn can lead to increased frustration, anger, and strained interpersonal relationships. We must begin to establish a friendship with silence.
How to make a friend of silence
While we have very little control over noise in the general environment, we do have control over our own private environment. This is where we begin to cultivate a friendship with silence.
* Consciously commit to the experience and appreciation of silence.
* Go for a nature walk. Let the silence soothe your spirit.
* When you are alone in your residence, turn off all devices that make noise. Start with fifteen minutes of silence and gradually increase the length.
* Learn to meditate and schedule a ten minute meditation period once or twice a day. Gradually lengthen your meditation time.
* When driving to work, turn off your car radio and drive quietly.
* Go camping for a night alone. Find a quiet campground where you don’t allow people to listen to your music without consideration for others. I usually go camping alone for a week each year to be alone and quiet in the fresh air. It has become something I look forward to.
* Drive to a lake at sunset and rent a canoe. Paddle slowly along the shoreline taking in the silent sights and soothing sounds of nature as the sun sets and darkness approaches.
* Quietly listen to your breath. Get a taste of the quiet rhythm of life.
* Right before bed, go outside and look up at the night sky. Soon you will feel another universal rhythm so unknown to many. Let the night sky and darkness embrace you and calm you as you prepare for the night’s rest.
* When you read a book, do it quietly. Many of us read to music or during TV commercials. Try the silence. You will come to love it.
Soon you’ll begin to appreciate the quiet periods you’ve built into your day, and you’ll want more. You will soon find that you are becoming more relaxed and less tense even in the midst of our noisy world. You will have made a priceless new friend of silence, a friend who can comfort, heal, and soothe your spirit. What a gift you have given yourself.
Be still and know the restorative power of silence.