There was a time i could not sit in silence for more than a few minutes without reaching for something to fill it. Phone, music, television, any background noise that meant i was not alone with just myself and whatever thoughts were in rotation that day.
I did not think of it as avoidance. I just thought of it as being someone who liked having things on in the background. Most people do. It is completely normal. The world is very loud and we have more ways to access that loudness than ever before, so constant noise has just become the default texture of being alive now.
But silence was doing something for me i did not understand until i had more of it. The thoughts i was drowning out with noise were not all bad thoughts. Some of them were actually important ones. Ideas that needed space to develop. Feelings that needed acknowledging. Clarity that was available but only in the gaps between stimulation.
The more i filled every available gap, the more i was actually cutting off access to my own inner life. Not dramatically, not in a way that was visible from the outside. But quietly, consistently, i was keeping myself at a certain surface level, never having to go deeper because there was always something else to look at.
The first time i sat genuinely quietly, deliberately, for longer than felt comfortable, was strange. The mind jumps around a lot without entertainment to anchor it. It took practice to stay with it rather than immediately reaching for the phone.
What came out of that practice eventually was not enlightenment or anything that sounds remarkable. Just a better relationship with my own thinking. A capacity to be bored without it feeling like an emergency. The occasional idea that would not have had room to arrive inside a noisier life.
Silence is not empty. It is just a different kind of full.
Protect some of it. The noise will always be available. The quiet requires actual choice.
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