Topic Tuesday #101 2014/06/24 "Silence"

Turn it off.

Turn it all off. Every gadget, every fan, every air conditioner, every engine, and listen. Be still.

Depending on where you are, you will still hear something. You may hear your breathing if you focus on it, but we usually tune it out, just like how the tip of our nose is always visible to our front facing eyes, but we ignore it.

You may hear someone talking seemingly far away.

You may hear a cicada or a cricket thrumming away. Perhaps a knot of toads or an army of frogs calling to one another. You may hear bird song, owl hoots, the knocking of woodpeckers, or even the humm of other flying things.

You may hear your own hearing damage. The slight and persistent ringing of tinnitus in the ears, a noise that never goes away and can be maddening.

The important thing in all this is to be aware there is more than the TV or the typing of a keyboard. There is a world around you that you may be taking for granted. Perhaps it has just been masked by all the trappings of what we think is a perfectly natural existence.

Turn it all off. Look around. Listen.

Get away from all the lights and look up. Hear the Earth sing its songs to you with swaying branches and whispered winds. Babbling brooks, raging rapids, roaring surf, all feel familiar in that primal heritage way, if you take a few minutes to notice them. Water makes so much noise. Rain falling through leaves to pepper the ground below with big thudding drops. The smell of a sea breeze or of a forest can energize and revitalize like nothing I have experienced in the world, but you do have to let your guard down to let it affect you.

You have all your senses to explore the world with. Appreciating all that the world has to offer is often a hard thing to do, when you are lead to believe it all has to have shine and LEDs to hold meaning. Remember that you are of this world. Getting to know it would do you some good. Not to sound too hippy dippy, but recent history has showed us that if you do not take care of the Earth, it will not take care of you either. Shutdown and reboot yourself now and then. Let yourself get back to basics. You can look down at your phone later.