Growing up in Cambridgeshire, in a house surrounded by fields, I had never given much thought to wanting or needing silence. It was already there.
Walking to school it was there, climbing a tree in the park it was there, and falling asleep, it was there. But when I grew up and moved to other places, my need for silence began to emerge.
Having read Erling Kagge’s Silence in the Age of Noise, I have come to reflect on what silence means to me in my own life now that I have reached my mid-twenties.
Erling Kagge is an author, lawyer, explorer and publisher. Most of his work surrounding silence comes from his expidition to The South Pole. He emphasises his increased value for silence after having trekked to The South Pole. Throughout the book he writes about the importance of achieving silence through serene moments; moments that we don’t always consciously recognise. He conveys how being present for small moments in life can improve our overall ability to be happy; as we empty our brain of thoughts, and make living a more enjoyable experience.
One of my most memorable moments of silence was not made up of absolute silence; but by a moment in which everything stopped to a very near silence. I was living in Berlin at the time, and I was on my way home from working a late shift at a bar in Neukolln. I was waiting for my bus connection at about three in the morning. I was cold, I was tired, and nobody was around. Kicking my feet on the floor and sighing, my mind suddenly tuned in to the noise of the traffic lights.
As I stood there, everything stopped. I stopped waiting for the bus, I stopped thinking about getting home. My mind was filled with the alternating high and low notes of the traffic lights and that alone. The ticking filled the otherwise silence of the night, and my mind settled. I was happy, and I was at peace.
I made it home that night, and the evening was otherwise mundane. But it was a turning point for me, as I began to appreciate peaceful moments. Sometimes I return to that moment in my mind, stood there in the street that night. I know for some of you who may be reading this, you might think, blimey just listen to the traffic lights and you’ll be happy… but yes, that is what Erling Kagge is trying to tell us. Happiness is in the small and serene moments.
He also states that we don’t have to be filling our days with noise and one hundred activities in order to feel satisfied, and you don’t have to be living in complete silence to feel at peace either. Like Erling, I don’t think that moments of silence have to take place in quiet settings alone, like the empty streets of Berlin. I think we can find meditative moments of silence in music, or in continuous noise, but it is important to feel content in complete silence too.
There are many places throughout the day to gather moments of silence, whether you’re listening to the coffee grinder churning, or to the rain hitting your window. It is subjective, and it is environmental. It is mostly you, and your relationship with your mind. Are you satisfied in that moment, and are you content?
There are so many moments of silence which we do not share with each other, is it because they are better left unspoken; or is it because we do not recognise them as an addition to our happiness?
Agate Amara 