Some time ago, I bought a book by the Norwegian explorer and author Erling Kagge called Stille (eng: Silence in the Age of Noise). The book consists of 33 attempts at explaining the three questions mentioned in the beginning of the book by telling short stories. The questions at the beginning are:
- What is silence?
- Where is it?
- Why is it so important nowadays?
Iām currently still at the beginning of the book, but am already quite enjoying it.
In modern society, we have so many possibilties to distract ourselves that we never have to sit in silence. Silence is considered to be boring and meaningless, after all, you could be doing something productive, right? The truth is, most of us are afraid of the silence, because we are terrified to just sit there with ourselves and our thoughts. Then, because we never sit there alone with ourselves, we forget how to do it in the first place. And so the fear of the silence grows stronger and stronger.
I guess there is nothing left to do, other than to embrace the silence and just sit there ā you, your thoughts and the silence.
Ash