“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone" -Blaise Pascal
I am a talker. Compared to a hummingbird, my friends joke that you hear me before you see me. My laugh enters a room before I do. Flitting from task to task, humming on a high frequency vibration- I am the opposite of still.
Extroverted, I have been called a "hoarder of people." I am the first to admit that I love to be surrounded by "buddies," as I fondly call anyone from a classmate to my 78 year-old pen pal I met at Laguardia airport. For it is with other people that I feel whole and held by the universe.
Living for human connection, my Superbowl is when I get to catch up with a friend over coffee or exclaim loudly upon running into an acquaintance on the street. It is in conversation that I feel acknowledged, that I am here. I think I talk so much so I can feel heard.
So when tasked with silence, 24 hours of it, I was terrified. My need to make noise comes from my fear of the quiet. Craving stimulation and distraction to drown out my inner voice, I am terrified of what she has to say when given free reign over my thoughts. Instead of turning inward, I am in the habit of reaching outward, co-creating the narrative of my life with others. By speaking, I don't have to listen to constant rumination of the voice that has narrated my entire life.
In my social science classes, we operate on the underlying assumption that human connection is a fundamental need. We cite studies that show that we as a species are more likely to die of loneliness than heart attack or cancer. I awoke to the morning of December 8th, my day of silence, with an inexplicable weight on my chest. Making sense of my surroundings became solely my responsibility. Unable to vet ideas or seek advice or receive positive reinforcement, the meaning that I was going to make of the world around me was to be written by my inner author. And I was terrified.
My yoga teacher Bryan Bennett often poses us this question: "In silence and stillness, do you like the company that you keep?" This question is haunting. When left to the bare bones of our self, stripped down to who we truly are, do we like this person? The only thing scarier than this question, is the process of uncovering its answer. One of the most interesting studies I have read is by Timothy Wilson, who studied the extent to which people hate being alone with themselves. In this study, participants sat alone in a room for fifteen minutes and were given the option to push a button and electrically shock themselves. There was no reward for the shock and it was completely up to the participant- they would have to sit in the room regardless. Shockingly, 67% of men and 25% of women chose to shock themselves rather than sit quietly. Given the option between negative stimulation and no stimulation, people actively chose to physically inflict pain on themselves.
I have to admit, if given the option to shock myself yesterday, I might have. The experience of being silent itself was physically painful. Words bottled up in my throat, I started crying multiple times doing mundane things like observing a yoga class or cooking dinner. Despite being surrounded by people, I was alone, lonely in my own body and mind.
The first hours were the most difficult. In an Uber on my way to yoga, I nodded to my driver's warm greeting, unable to participate in his small talk. When he dropped me off and wished me to have a great day, I was acutely aware of how my unresponsiveness and silence de-energized him. I felt like a monster, withholding from him the dignity of being acknowledged. It was a palpable pain, a discomfort that pressed on my throat and chest.
But how often does this happen when we are not aware? How often do we forgo the opportunity to connect and chat with someone because we are otherwise occupied? So wrapped up in our phones and lives, we are missing out on humanity. For it is a human need to be acknowledged, and it is our duty to give others the affirmation of being, to let our actions say I see you and hear you. By saying hello or thank you, we greet and recognize another person as someone on the same planet, someone of our same humanity. The power of greeting was one lesson that I learned in silence.
As I reflect on how much I learned yesterday, I wonder, “why, as humans, are we so scared of silence?” In the quiet, we slow down and really process what is happening. Our interpretation of the stimuli we experience forms our perception of our life's quality. Living itself is just the summation of millions of unique stimuli; our lives being the story we tell ourselves about these stimuli. We create our reality through our consciousness. The stories we tell ourselves about the way the world is and why things are come from our unique past experiences, values, and histories. I have spent my life on autopilot, blissfully unaware of the author who is writing my world based on the past 21 chapters of existence. Third-person omniscient. Forced into silence, my role transformed from being an actor to an observer. As part of the audience, I became acutely aware of the way I talk to myself. Calling this inner voice to center stage, I started to listen.
I also listened to the world around me. It is amazing what people will tell you when you are silent. So uncomfortable in the quiet, I found the people around me kept talking and talking when I failed to verbally respond to them. They disclosed more about themselves than I would have ever imagined, desperately trying to fill the void between them and me. This made me realize how rarely I truly listen to others. Being silent and unable to respond forced me to deeply listen to the person talking, no longer allocating energy to formulating a response.
In the same way, I also became aware of how thoughtlessly I speak in my normal day to day. I too, fill silence with chatter, saying anything to break the quiet. I can't help but wonder how much I have missed, from failing to notice body language or recognize a tone of voice or facial expression in my mindless monologues. Dr. Professor Mirvel once told my class, "communication is not about you." I hear this sentiment now, more than ever. My conversations used to be about me, for me, something I could use to distract myself and validate myself.
I also came to know the power of touch. Unable to speak, I embraced the people who spoke to me, trying to convey the words unsaid through a hug or smile. How much I appreciated being acknowledged when I was unheard. I gave adjustments in four yoga classes, and it was my favorite activity of the day. In the dark and silence of the yoga studio, I felt able to communicate again as no one was speaking. We were once again in the same language, turned inward, communicating through breath and body. Through touch I felt purposeful, helping people get deeper into the stretch of their bodies and peace of their minds in savasana. I felt like I was pouring love into the people I adjusted, as I was so grateful for a way of communication, of connecting, even if momentarily.
These moments of togetherness were the bright spots of my day of silence. The bulk of the day was an excruciating spiral of thought, in which I tried to distract myself with activity. Only three times in my life have I felt so lonely. The first, when stranded in Stuttgart, Germany without a phone and unable to speak the language. The other time, on my second day in New York when I was 19 years old and did not know a soul. And yesterday, when I was in the place that had been my home for the last 4 years and I was invisible.
Thankfully, as the day progressed, the silence morphed from suffocating into a tolerable discomfort. No longer feeling like I was going to explode, my inner voice stopped screaming. Like a dog who has completely exhausted itself from barking, my inner author walked itself in a few circles and then curled into a ball at my feet. At the end of the night, I fell into a deep and restful sleep, comfortable now in the silence.
Today, I find myself taking a few more moments before speaking, a new level of awareness to how I communicate. I am acutely aware of the power of touch and what it feels like to deeply listen to someone. I return to Bryan’s question: “In silence and stillness, do you like the company that you keep?” And my answer: Yes, I did like the company that I found in my silence and stillness. My inner voice is not a monster. She has written the story of my life thus far, but shaken from my fog of unawareness, I commit myself to authoring it with her, instead of trying to drown her in noise. By infusing my life with a little more quiet and a little more stillness, I have found peace for myself, within myself. In the space created by silence, I write my story.