Silence

Really, this thought has been tugging on me for quite some time. I'm not sure why I resisted the pull. Perhaps it is because silence frightens me--it closes the doors to distractions so that the tiniest tremor in your mind, the most insignificant blemish, seems like a mountain to you. A tsunami. An earth-splitting fissure.

While I write this, I forego my usual routine of listening to calming, centering music. It seems a hypocritical thing to do while you contemplate the unmoving. If I am to control myself and truely grasp what it is to be overwhelmed by nothing, I must first experience it. For silence can be far more horrible than most people realize. And it can be far more beautiful.

As I said before, silence is a removal of distractions. It is a tool that one may use to understand what is really important to you. Without the confusing, spinning, whirling stimulation of a world whose only concern is to brainwash you, what are you? It scares some people to even glimpse. There are monsters that blankets of other cover. Even if you do not nurture these beasts, even if you try your hardest to pretend they're not there, they will grow on their own. And soon the creatures are far too big to be totally covered by games and pleasure, and they strike at all you hold dear.

Introspection takes time, and takes effort, but most of all, it take bravery. Are you courageous enough to face the monster while it is still small? It will be easiest that way. Why do you think Therapists have nothing around them but stress relievers? Do you think it would work if they were playing music in the background? If they had a movie on or went to a restaurant? Silence is a tool, just like anything else, for understanding oneself and what is inside.

I know it's scary. It's lonely, sometimes, when you can't get away from it. You know where other people are--worse, you remember the feeling you get when you are around them--but you cannot reach them. Even when they're a mere few feet away. There is a barrier, and they won't speak. They don't know, or they don't care, how much you need them to.

But silence can be heard. I used to listen to it all the time--I still do, but not as much. I can hear the harmony of the content. I can see the crescendo of the joyous and I can feel the discordant strains of those that suffer. I don't know how to explain it to someone who does not know, but it is there. There is nothing wrong with not having anything to do every once in awhile. Why must we fill everything with warped mindlessness? I am at my best, inwardly and outwardly, once I have taken the silence into perspective.