Si­lence is Mu­sic to my Ears

By Anne Round

Published The Magic Happens Magazine June 2021

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Re­cently, we had the plea­sure of walk­ing in the woods on a warm sunny day of Spring. We of­ten walk to­gether in si­lence. Our years to­gether have cre­ated a pleas­ant com­fort. We en­joy walk­ing with­out hav­ing to in­ter­rupt the en­ergy with our voices.

The moun­tain we were en­cir­cling with our steps held a deep ac­cep­tance of all that passes by. The trees shared their mag­nif­i­cence with a gen­tle cradling of our pres­ence as we vis­ited their home. The flow­ers em­anated beauty and de­light. They re­joiced in be­ing glo­ri­ous as an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the mo­ment. The ex­pe­ri­ence held me, peace­fully know­ing that all is well. It in­creased my co­her­ence with the nat­ural world and stead­ied me on my path.

Noise of­ten shat­ters the si­lence of our con­tem­pla­tions. The busi­ness of liv­ing a life dis­tracts us from the flow of our nat­ural rhythm. How many of us ac­tu­ally know what our nat­ural rhythm is? When I give my­self to the silent flow of life, I feel like I am play­ing hooky or not at­tend­ing to what “needs” do­ing. The pres­sure of not fol­low­ing the rules is a hur­dle I have to over­come con­stantly. The guilt takes me down a path of more and more dis­trac­tion so that I can­not hear what the si­lence has to say to me now.

I sur­vived teenage chil­dren’s con­tin­ual noise by us­ing head­phones and heart-cen­tered mu­sic while I did kitchen chores. I seem to be a per­son who needs calm, and ca­coph­ony is very dis­turb­ing for my sys­tem. It is re­lated to my up­bring­ing when older sib­lings barged into my world of imag­i­nary play with their roughshod opin­ions. I do en­joy lis­ten­ing to mu­sic and pod­casts. I chose when and how much I want to be in­flu­enced by those ex­ter­nal in­puts.

A fond mem­ory from my child­hood is the en­gine on the sail­boat turn­ing off. The steady beat of the diesel to get the boat off the dock and into the open wa­ter is over­pow­er­ing. The sails are hoisted, with lots of bang­ing and snap­ping. Then the en­gine is shut off once set­tled on course, and the peace is pal­pa­ble. The noises are only those of the nat­ural world, wind in the sails and wa­ter lap­ping at the ves­sel as it surges for­ward. The chaos of prepa­ra­tion van­ishes with the peace of be­ing in na­ture.

The de­sire to sit in si­lence has been creep­ing into my sys­tem. I find it easy to do when I can sit on the deck star­ing at the stars or lis­ten to the birds. It is much harder to sit in my chair in the liv­ing room, not be­ing oc­cu­pied by read­ing or some­thing. I am so trained to keep my­self con­stantly busy. I re­treat to the bath­tub for peace and quiet. It is an ac­cept­able place to re­lax and do noth­ing.

Si­lence is vi­brant with en­ergy and life. It is alive and in­ter­ac­tive. Cul­ti­vat­ing peace in my life al­lows my soul room to em­body and speak its truth. I can hear my in­tu­ition loud and clear when I qui­etly move through my day. The sweet­ness of si­lence is a nat­ural field of vi­tal­ity that is mu­sic to my ears.

May we all ap­pre­ci­ate the melodies that soothe our souls.