Quiet! It’s what many of us want, but is increasingly difficult to find. And people tend to be getting louder! American writer George wrote his book Zero Decibels, about his quest to find peace. It started when two trains rolled up at once at a New York subway station, the screeching so bad he clamped his hands over his ears. So he went off round the world, in a search for the quietest place on earth. He thought it would be Antarctica, but in fact there are high winds, screeching albatrosses and lots of ships.
He finally found the quietest place on earth, which was a lab for that purpose in mid-western USA. But you know what? He didn’t like it! He went in and found it was so quiet, he could hear his own pulse. He could even hear the sound of his scalp moving across his head! This shows that in fact, we don’t want absolute silence. We just want nice sounds: the rustle of wind in the trees, the purr of a cat, the trickle of a river. But not piped music!
It’s Okay to be an Introvert
These days it seems the world and his wife expect you to always be on call, and noisy with it. Years ago, most people were a lot quieter. There’s nothing wrong with being an extrovert, but things have gone silly with people screaming and whooping all the time, making us easily-overwhelmed sensitive introverts wanting to go crawl under a rock and stay there!
Introverts and extroverts can easily get along, if both respect the other is different. And often it’s the outgoing ones that won’t give introverts the quiet time they need. Remember back in the day watching Bullseye? The contestants were friendly, but if they won the speedboat or not, you’d never have known. Today if quiz show contestants win a pen, they start screaming and yelling and jumping up and down, in some kind of TV narcissism.
There are serious repercussions for a society that insists everyone be loud. Children are sometimes given medical drugs (which in some cases have caused suicide through side effects) simply to ‘cure shyness’. Why do you need to cure a child of not being outgoing? Shyness is not an illness, it’s simply an (often charming) personality trait.
Extroverts usually have casual friends, close friends, friends from work, friends from school, friends from that show they did 10 years ago. As an introvert, however, I make friends in a different way. Would they want to sit and have a deep conversation with me? Are they someone I can trust to have my back? And would they mind if I hung out on my own sometimes? Only a few people make the cut. Putting me in a room full of outgoing people is like blasting loud music into my ears. It makes me anxious and miserable. Kim Dresner
Remembering the Lost Art of Silence
The Lost Art of Silence is a unique celebration of silence in art, literature, art and spirituality, and an exploration of its ability to bring inner peace. Silence is often overlooked for its ability to find a quiet place that’s worth discovering. This book encourages us to pursue a quieter life and invoke the wisdom of great writers, thinkers, musicians and artists.
Author Sarah Anderson reveals the sublime nature of quiet that’s all too often undervalued in modern society. Sarah is a travel writer and painter, who founded the bookshop that was later featured in the film Notting Hill.
