05.09.07
Silence
When Evelyn and I visited Santorini last fall, we took an eight-hour ferry ride to get there. The ferry docked at the port in Santorini, and we disembarked with hundreds of other passengers, a mix of late season tourists, like us, and locals returning home. In the crowd waiting at the dock, we saw a man holding a sign with the name of our hostel on it. He led us to his van and threw our suitcases in the back. An older Greek couple joined us for the short trip to the hostel and bickered with our driver the whole time in the way that parents do with their children. At least, that’s what their Greek sounded like to me.
When we stepped out of the van at the hostel, Evelyn and I looked at each other.
“It’s so quiet!” one of us said.
And it was. For a brief moment, before we had to deal with our bags and checking in and figuring out what we were going to do next, the stillness was absolute. We couldn’t hear cars or birds or even the ocean. It was like a soft blanket of peace had been wrapped around us, just for a second. I don’t think I realized how much noise I live in every day until it all stopped.
The noise isn’t all external, either. I often leave my music off during my commute to and from work each day, but I wouldn’t call those rides quiet. My mind spends the whole time running from thought to thought: what I did yesterday, what I’m going to do tomorrow, emails I want to write, made up stories set in made up worlds that I probably will never write. It all goes round and round in circles.
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be quiet and still for a day. To sit in front of the ocean and just watch the waves crash. Or by a lake, watching the clouds float by overhead. How long would i be able to stand it? How long would it take for my fingers to start itching for a keyboard and a wireless connection? Would I be able to sit still, quiet my mind, and just listen? I am curious what an hour (or even more) of silence and stillness would do for me (although apparently not curious enough to have tried it yet).
I think I read once that in the Bible you get descriptions of heaven as a place of rest because people in those days worked hard all the time. Rest was something they longed for. Now when we hear about heaven as a place of rest, we think it must be boring. A whole eternity of Sunday afternoons. But I wonder if it’s because we don’t know what rest really is. And perhaps because we don’t know what work really is. Or at least I don’t think I do. I mean, I sit at a desk all day and type. Even though I come home exhausted at the end of the day, it’s an exhaustion born out of boredom. My job does nothing to feed my soul. And then I go home and immerse myself in movies and TV shows and other things that occupy my time in meaningless ways. And so I don’t really work, and I don’t really rest.