Silence Asks Us to Stay

I can stand in the middle of São Paulo surrounded by traffic, voices, engines, music. Yet experience an extraordinary inner quiet. I find this happening often as I walk these chaotic streets. That’s not to say they are always chaotic.

The suburbs can be quiet, with only birds, rustling trees and my own thoughts. Sometimes there is no escape from them.

Then there is my other home.

I can stand alone on a Scottish hillside, with almost no sound at all, while my mind is deafening.

Perhaps that is the strange thing about silence. We think of it as something around us. A place without traffic, without voices, without music. A remote hillside or an empty room.

But I’m beginning to wonder if silence has very much to do with sound at all. Because I can find quiet among thousands of people and noise when I am completely alone.

It's strange. Sometimes the noisier the world becomes the quieter I become within it. And sometimes when the world falls silent I discover just how noisy I am.

Perhaps that is why we have become so good at filling the spaces between things. You know, those small moments when nothing is expected or required from us. For example, taking a walk, waiting on a bus, cooking or even sitting alone. Nowadays there is always something we can reach for. Earbuds to listen to something, a book to read, something to watch.

There is nothing wrong with any of that.

Music has accompanied me for much of my life. There are times when the sound of another voice, a song, a conversation or just the noise of people living around us can be what we need.

As I was writing a poem about this subject, it led me to think more deeply, and I began to wonder. Do we sometimes fill those empty spaces not because we are bored, but because we are uncomfortable with what might enter them? A thought, a memory or a question we have been avoiding.

Perhaps there are things that only become loud enough to hear when everything else becomes quiet. Regrets. Fears. The conversation we keep replaying. Someone we miss. Something we should have said. Something we wish we hadn’t.

And perhaps this is why silence can feel so different from peace. After all, peace suggests rest. Silence makes no such promise. Silence can be uncomfortable. Even frightening. Because there is nowhere for the thought to disappear. But perhaps silence carries another possibility too. Not an answer or some sudden revelation about who we are supposed to be.

Just the possibility of remaining. Of not reaching immediately for something else. Of allowing a thought to arrive and not chasing it away.

Maybe noise allows us to escape ourselves.

Silence asks us to stay and perhaps stay is the important word. Not fix, not understand, not improve, just stay.

Stay with the memory.

Stay with the uncertainty.

Stay with the sadness.

Stay with the joy too, because I suspect we sometimes hurry past that just as easily.

Stay long enough to hear ourselves beneath everything else.

And maybe silence isn't asking us to be alone. Maybe it is simply asking us to keep ourselves company.

Tomorrow I will walk out into São Paulo again. There will be traffic, voices, engines, music. The city will carry on being the city.

And maybe, just maybe, that is the point.

I don't need the world to become quiet. I just need, occasionally, to stop running from the person walking through it.