Brighton Lights: Lynn Ruth Miller

Lynn Ruth Miller: stop, be still, listen …

Society has lost the art of silence. Our cell phones bleep, our computers dingle; our motors roar, the air is filled with sirens, horns and screeching brakes. In our homes, we hear heaters purr and the fridge rumble. Our ears are bombarded with wordless noise, yet as soon as we enter a room we turn on a radio or switch on the TV. Quiet has become taboo.

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” said the French philosopher Blaise Pascal, back in the fifteenth century. If he thinks it was bad back then, he would be appalled with now. All he had to deal with were the chiming church bells, the rattle of carts and the clip clop of horses. Nowadays, the only way you can escape the hubbub of life is to wear earplugs.
 
The truth is that we really don’t want silence. If it were REALLY quiet, all we would have to amuse ourselves would be our own thoughts.

One glorious day, I stopped running

I love my thoughts. They are wispy little things that float in my head and remind me that anything is possible, and everything can be fun. They are adorable little imps that say; “Oh go ahead, be naughty. No one is looking.” Sometimes they say; “If this moment feels like hell, hang on. A new moment is on its way.” I have very optimistic thoughts, and they keep me going even more than that second glass of wine I should have refused.
 
There was a time when I didn’t appreciate how powerful my thoughts could be, and I ignored them. Those were the days when my head was filled with nasties, like “What will people say?” and “That just isn’t done.” It happened to us all in those turbulent teen-aged years when parents, teachers and the media told us what was good and bad and we were too vulnerable to figure out that we had a choice, if we could only stop and think about it.

Then there were my twenties and thirties, when I was so busy racing through my life that I didn’t have time to sit in a silent room and wonder where I was going. Then one glorious day, I stopped running.

The background noise of modern life jingled and jangled about me, but I closed my mind to it all and forced myself to listen to ME. At first, when I tried just sitting there, I became so frightened I opened the windows and drank in the sirens, the horns, the screeching tires of my neighbourhood … as if they were honey. 

But I am much older now, and I figured it out. If I can shut out the external garbage that fills my head, I can focus on one of those sweet little dreams that are buried there, and actually make them come true.
“Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.”
– Francis Bacon