Quiet Please!

I have often wondered who decided that we needed to be constantly bombarded with noise day in and day out.   It seems everywhere you go there is noise.  Music, or news,or a sports game playing on a big screen, .  Even in my apartment there is music coming out of a speaker in front of the elevator on my floor,and in the lobby a television screen because how tragic would it be for me to have to be left uninformed in the brief time it takes the elevator to come. Even in the dr's office waiting room we are subjected to news being broadcast on a t.v in the waiting room.  There seems to be no escape from it.  Why is this?  Did people complain that they were bored in the waiting room or at the elevator or in the restaurants?   Don't we all have enough devices these days that we can plug in to entertain ourselves no matter where we are?  Is it too much to expect people who are eating together to actually talk to each other rather than gaze numbly at the latest headlines?

As you can probably guess, I like quiet.  I like it a lot.  My apartment is silent.  T.V is never on, unless I am watching a movie, I don't play any music, no ipod. When I am playing on line games I turn the music off.   And I like it that way.  I like music, but I always have music in my head and have no need to add to that.  I find noise distracting and as annoying and very stressful.  AND DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON LEAF BLOWERS!

Maybe it's that we are all afraid of our feelings. Maybe we need noise to distract us from what is going on inside ourselves.  Maybe we don't like to be alone with our thoughts.  They might make us face things we would rather not face in our own lives.  So we keep feeding our brains endless stimuli to mask that stuff.  Have you ever sat in silence?   Turned off everything in your home and just sat and listened?  You should try it.  It's amazing how relaxing it is.   When I leave a noisy place I feel my body release all of the tension I had been holding while being assaulted by noise.   And yes, even music is noise to me unless I am some place for the sole purpose of listening to music. The worst is when music is being piped in at a volume so low you can't tell what song is playing, but you can still hear it.

I was shopping at Target one Christmas and I noticed something interesting.  There was no music.  It was quiet!  And because there was no music, people who shopped there were quieter.  The whole place had a relaxed feel to it.  It was wonderful.  Costco is the same.  It is busy as hell most days and moving around in the store is a puzzle.  But the atmosphere is calm.  There is no music.  Just the sound of people shopping.

I think it would do wonders for peoples mental health to spend at least one hour a day in silence.  Not necessarily silent meditation, but just silence.  See if you feel more refreshed afterwards.