Monday, January 2, 2012

"Be ok with silence."


This gem came to me after realizing that I might have an entertainment addiction. I'm a girl who constantly needs music, and if I turn it off I need to watch Family Guy. Or Archer. Or a new movie I just downloaded. If I stop that, I have to scroll through my Tumblr dashboard, usually putting my music on again. I distinctly remember being extremely uncomfortable whenever I commute without my iPod. I've recovered out of that for a while, but it was replaced by sleeping in the bus. It's as if I'd rather be unconscious than to deal with silence. I can't be by myself.

It takes me hours to fall asleep sometimes. Because I somehow have this pathological resolution that I will get restless if it's silent and I need something to lull me to sleep. Sure, it does lull me to sleep-state, but I'm usually woken up a dozen times afterwards and start paying attention to some asinine Peter Griffin quip. Or my favorite part in a song. Or simply, I get woken up because the volume is too loud. So I walk to the laptop (I position it in the other side of the room) and.... put the volume down. After a few more times, I get sleepy enough to decide to actually turn it off, because I'd be surely falling right asleep the second I go back to bed.

I wrote this on a bathroom tile when I remembered a lesson I seem to have forgotten. I don't want to forget it anymore: You can't pour more water into a cup that's already full. I was masking unease by getting absorbed in music, compulsions, games, and humor, but with it I am also masking all of my potential for creation for the day. Days shrink into minutes, It's like time is junkfood that I'm eating really fast. It does not do the job, and it's a resource that's usually depleted before I know it. Silence is a way of creating a vacuum in your brain, for functionality to seep in. I've been so afraid of facing my requirements that I feel I cannot accomplish.


Well Bea, let these things, tried and tested, reassure you:


  1. You fall asleep really quickly when you just fold the lappy onto itself and jump onto the bed.
  2. You get used to silence after a while, and it makes time go MUCH SLOWER. At first it feels like boredom, but eventually you start relaxing in this state, and it's just.. calm energy with a lot of  potential. :)
  3. After the initial "struggle", working starts to feel more natural, and freeing instead of limiting.
  4. It's hard to topple a bike over when it's moving.
  5. Thoughts and ideas become so much more tangible and real in silence. :D
  6. Daredevil's hearing is fantastic because he has no sight to distract him from sound. Using a lot of senses is a form of multitasking. It's a micro-form of that Napoleon Hill quote:

“Until a man selects a definite purpose in life, he dissipates his energies and spreads his thoughts over so many subjects and in so many different directions that they lead not to power, but to indecision and weakness.


With the aid of a small reading glass, you can teach yourself a great lesson on the value of organized effort. Through the use of such a glass, you can focus the sun’s rays on a definite spot so strongly that they will burn a hole through a plank. Remove the glass (which represents the definite purpose), and the same rays of sun may shine on that same plank for a million years without burning it.

-Hill, Napoleon; 1925


See how powerful this change can become? Clogging my brain pathways with music and entertainment when it's unnecessary leads to me pushing tasks along, and before I know it's time for bed, and even sleep gets pushed along, so I wake up late, and have less time the next day, which I use by pushing more tasks along. Being okay with silence, immersing myself with the discomfort of feeling my inadequacies, pushes me harder into action.


Be okay with silence.

4 comments:

  1. I wish this would work for me as well. But I really am awfully annoyed if I don't have my music in a loud place. And I also have a hard time falling asleep in a silent environment.
    Actually silence isn't as bad as pseudo-silence so earplugs make it a little easier for me.
    When I think about it, it's actually unpredictable sounds that are the most unsettling. When listening to music, watching something or being in a completely silent place, you EXPECT the sounds or lack of sounds. But when you have no control over what you hear it becomes unpleasant.

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  2. That's okay as long as you can work while listening/watching something :)

    You'd HATE sleeping in my room XD

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  3. Maybe, unless you're sleeping next to me :)

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  4. :")
    and anyway, there's always earplugs, too. put them in your packing list!

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