I think I've mentioned before that before I dumped my TV service, it was almost always on in the house. I turned it on the minute I walked in the door from work and turned it off before I headed upstairs to bed. On weekends, it was on from the time I woke up. Most of my time in front of the television consisted of doing other things as I was watching it, but it was definitely a constant background to my home life.
I have found that even since I've stopped watching television, I often turn on my iPod, which is hooked up to my stereo and speakers, and listen to that throughout the evenings as I read, surf the internet or write. So, still, there is not a lot of silence in my life.
A few years ago, during a particularly hot summer, we were experiencing a lot of blackouts in my neighborhood. As the house got stuffy (some of the outages were lasting six hours or more), I would sit on the deck in my back yard and just listen. Even with some traffic noise coming from the freeway a block away, it was eerily quiet. The normal rumblings of homes in the neighborhood had been silenced completely.
As I sit here now, I am comforted by the relative absence of noise and am reminded that sometimes one really should seek out silence, even though it's not something that's encountered often naturally. In a world where we are bombarded with pings and dings, buzzes and rings, silence give us space. Space to think, space to be inspired, space to breathe.
The next time you've reached your limit, consider heading into another room (or corner if that's all you have), turn off the TV and phone, silence your email alerts and take a few minutes, just breathing in whatever silence you can get.
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