Silence is golden

There is another kind of silence to be cultivated besides that of the tongue regarding others. I mean silence regarding oneself — restraining the imagination, not permitting it to dwell too much on what we have heard or said, not indulging in the fantastic scenes of picture thoughts, whether of the past or future. Be sure that you have made much progress in the spiritual life when you can control your imagination, so as to fix upon the duty and occupation actually existing to the exclusion of the crowd of thoughts which are perpetually sweeping across the mind. No doubt, you cannot prevent those thought from arising, but you can prevent yourself from dwelling on them. You can put them aside. You can check the self-complacency or irritation or earthly longings that feed them. By the practice of such control of your thoughts, you will attain that spirit of inward silence which draws the should into a close communion with God.

Jean Nicolas Grou

After I retired from the work world and then from too much volunteering, a quietness settled on my life. Now I realize that in our incessant need to talk, we miss out on the gifts of silence. Blaise Pascal noted that many of our problems derive from our inability to sit still in a room. We feel pressured to fill our minds with endless thoughts.

Richard L. Morgan in
Pilgrimage into the Last Third of Life

Nothing is so unbearable to a man as to be completely at rest, without passions, with our business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his falseness, his insufficiency his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness.

Blaise Pascal, Pensees, 131

I’ve always liked solitude and being by myself.   It’s a good thing too because the single life pretty much requires this.   I don’t like crowds and try never to get in them unless I have to.  But like most people since the dawn of the Internet and smart phones, I have trouble concentrating and and am easily distracted by the multitude of things I want to do online instead of reading the many books and magazines lying in stacks in my bedroom.  And as much as my mind has become ever more crowded and my thoughts and my attention span dwindles even further, I have to ask myself why this is so.

Many years ago I used to walk or ride my bike and sit on a bench at the park or lie on the grass on a nice sunny day in Spring or Fall and simply think and daydream and just let the stillness and sounds of Nature comfort me and be my muse.  There was no such thing as email, text messages and reading articles on one’s phone.  That would have seemed very futuristic 30 years ago.

The other day I stopped to sit on my favorite bench at the state park and it had not been five minutes before I had my phone in my hand reading something.  I had vowed I wasn’t going to do it.  I felt like those people, young and old, that you see everywhere talking or texting on their phones as much hey walk down the street.

I fear we are losing the capacity to cultivate silence.   Silence in a meditative sense means being alone with our thoughts.  No outside distractions.  You have to find the right place for this, too.  The gardens and parks near me allow this to happen if I let it.

Sometimes though I think we want the distractions because this allows us to avoid thinking too deeply about anything.  The great fear is death so the busier we are doing he things the farther that is from our minds.   We then feel a bit immortal, like we’re always going to be busy with something, postponing the reckoning with our deepest selves that we all must eventually confront.  In many ways I envy one of my mother’s caregivers who has no smartphone, doesn’t get the newspaper or listen to cable news, and only goes on the Internet when she has to at the library.   The first thing she says when she comes to work is “what did I miss in the news this week?”  Then she’s shocked, disturbed and angry.  What am I supposed to say?  You don’t want to know?   Where to even begin?  My mind is overflowing with the bad news of the week that has me depressed and near despairing.  As you know, it’s really bad these days.

What to do?  Through sheet willpower I’m going to have to limit my exposure to all the countless distractions that come with the Internet and concentrate on the best sites and activities such as my photo sharing sites and photo blogs and Web sites where I love to discover new talent.  And to be thankful for communities like Open Diary and Prosebox that let me express myself and learn about the lives of interesting and caring people in those communities.  I’ve been retired almost a year now and paradoxically time seems now to be going by much faster than when I was working.  I love the new freedom I have, limited though it is because of my role as primary caregiver for my 94 year old mother.  Still, it’s a whole new world, another life I’m living.

When I read books, I find my mind expanding and intellectual excitement intensifying as it never quite does on the Internet.  That’s  because the Internet is like a vast treasure hunt.  There are unlimited numbers of maps that lead to the priceless treasure of new discoveries, but when you embark on those endless treasure hunts, you never come to the end because you’re wandering down so many paths.  The mind becomes overwhelmed, the frustration mounts because all the various maps lead everywhere and nowhere. I love the novelty and endless fascination, but what am I doing but amusing myself and having fun distancing myself from what really matters.  It’s exciting, it’s unpredictable, it’s constantly enabling me to be better informed and knowledgeable.

Maybe there really is a reason for everything we do and experience.  Don’t I realize I won’t have the complete picture until the time comes when I see you everything clearly.   I feel better.   I’m going to keep the big picture in mind.    Tonight I’m going to tackle that stack of magazine article after I start catching up with friends on OD and PB.