It has been a full 10 days since I have had the chance to sit and put words to ‘paper’. So much has happened in the world, our country, and my own life. It feels as if some person, the keeper of time, took switch in hand and turned up the RPMs to life. We no longer are traveling at 33-1/3. We have gone past 44 rpm and have even surpassed the old 78. Yet, life continues. We get up each morning, we take a breath, and we start our day. Life continues.
For the last few weeks, my office has been on summer work hours. We work 4-10s (4 days, 10 hours each). This allows for the office to be shut on Fridays, supposedly to save money. It also means three-day weekends. Since our little one and my wife are now off for the summer, I actually get up very early and head into work so I have a few hours to get work done before others show up. It doesn’t matter that I leave the house early since they would be asleep even if I left for the normal hours. So early to bed, early to rise, makes a man able to have some time in silence.
Here in Southern California, we go through a season of June Gloom. Early in the morning, we have clouds form over the ocean that are then pushed over the land. If you wake up early enough, you will generally find yourself in fog and mist. I like this time of year though a number of SoCal residents prefer the warmer days. One reason I like it is due to where we live. While we are part of Los Angeles, we are in the mountains. The gloom tends to burn off quicker at this level. This makes going down into the valleys interesting since you can see the fog and clouds just hanging below waiting for you to pass through them. It is even nicer when you drive back up the hill and break through into the sun and blue skies.
The other reason I like June Gloom is for the silence. Mind you, it is pretty quiet at 4:30 in the morning – fog or no fog, but the addition of the fog seems to remove any remaining morning sounds from the area. Quite often when I am out and about at this hour, I get transported back to the mornings of basic training. While the call of the bugle was anything but silent, the march from roll call to the chow hall was quiet with only the sound of the boots hitting the pavement. The sun was not up, cars were not moving about, just us. The trainees, their lovely Training Instructors, and a few birds. Otherwise, no sound.
As I mentioned earlier, fog adds to the silence of the morning. Having lived in the land of fog, the UK, and even growing up in Western New York, I have experienced my share of foggy mornings. I can only imagine that walking in a deep fog is probably the closest I will get to suspended animation. You cannot see anything (believe me, I have been in fogs in which anything more than a few inches was obscured), you really cannot smell anything, and the sound has been deadened. One is in silence. One is left to be with him/herself.
In the last few weeks, I have been walking out my door to this June Gloom, this wonderful fog, this peaceful silence. At first, I walked at got in my car and off I went. As each day passed, I have found that I am lingering longer and longer in my backyard before getting into the car. This morning I sat. I sat there in the dark. I sat there in the middle of the fog. I sat in silence. I have found that the silence is starting to sneak into other aspects of my life. I no longer turn on the radio in the car. My drive is in silence. I no longer turn on music or news when I reach the office. I listen to quiet for the first couple of hours in the office. Even tonight, while sitting with my daughter, who is reading, there is no sound in the room – just peace.
I want to admit that this can be a scary thing to do. When one does not have outside sound filling one’s ears; you are left to your thoughts. At first, I found my brain was full of its own noise. I went over lists of things to do. I thought about issues that were happening with the family. I replayed old problems in my head. I worried about the future. I worried some more. After a while, though, your brain gets the message that it does not have to be fully active all of the time. It finally will settle into its own silence. Then you get to enjoy both outward and inward silence. You get to think about nothing. You can find a new inner peace.
So what does fog and silence have to do with the opening of this post. I am finding that the more that is happening in the world, the more I need silence in my life. It all started a few weeks ago with the killing of a gorilla. It moved through politics and the naming of candidates for the upcoming election. Finally, this week with the tragic murders of the men and women in Orlando and today, the death of a 2 year-old while at Disney World. It seemed like everywhere one turned the news was all over the place. Even listening while listening to a musical radio station or watching a comedy on television, the breaks all had some bit of information about how additional facts were coming out and how we needed to watch or listen to be up on all of the stories.
While the radio and television and their advertisements for news is not new, the 24/7 barrage of media is still a relatively new thing for our world. There is no turning off the information. It is always on. What makes it worse is that the stations know that they cannot just repeat the same facts over and over so they break in to the story as soon as something new is discovered. The problem is that they do not give the people a chance to check on whether or not the new fact is accurate – it gets broadcasted with the understanding that it can be corrected later. It just doesn’t stop.
Add to this, the fact that social media allows everyone to voice their opinion and facts. Facebook is not a place of refuge from current events. One cannot find some respite from the speculations of how things could have been, should have been, or how they would have handled it. I see friends, life-long friends, in full blown arguments on how things should be handled. I see others jumping into conversations and verbally attacking people who they have never met, but feel comfortable enough calling them every name in the book just because they disagree. I see and hear a lot of talk, but no one seems to be listening.
Through all of this, as I sat this morning in my shroud of silence, the lyrics to Simon and Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence played in my head. While I am sure the song had a different meaning when first written, the words seem to be talking about today:
Ten thousand people, maybe more People talking without speaking People hearing without listening
It seems like so much is being said but nothing new is being voiced. It feels as if so many people are hearing without listening. They hear the words but are not listening to what the other person is saying,
The above comments are not just about the normal every day person. It is really about our leaders. They talk but say nothing. The do not listen to each other. There is so much that they could learn, but they let the words fall in the well of silence.
So, for now at least, I am turning off the noise. I am sitting in my silence. I will not isolate myself. I will turn on the noise to keep up with new events in the world, but then off it will go again. I would rather be walking around in no sound than in the sound that is currently happening.
So tonight I wish everybody the chance to find that silence. Find that peace.
Thank you for meandering with me tonight.