09/06: loving the silence
I admit I've loved this break a little too much. So, I'm back with: thoughts on silence, consumption, and finding kinship with creation.
Good morning (afternoon, evening). How wonderful to be with you again! I have so so so loved taking a pause this summer, and I am comforted in knowing I am not the only one. Most people, it seems, also took a step back to just enjoy the fruits of the season. I’ve seen lots of camping and road trips and voyages all over the internet, and even some of my favourite Substacks have taken a break as people languish in the longer days, filling their cups with sunshine and lake water and rest.
ICYMI, I’m in Ontario for a few weeks, spending much-needed moments with family, friends, and mango the cat (who is currently sleeping under my chair). We are navigating difficult health diagnoses and decisions with a family member—which I will write about in another post—so it feels like a large gift to be able to visit for this amount of time. Being here is funny. It’s a reprieve, of course, from duties like cooking and other responsibilities, but it’s also a space/time warp where I forget that I have a life, apartment, and humans back in Calgary. If I don’t speak to you much, it’s because I’m caught up in this little bubble of humidity, my mind centered around what’s in front of me. I’ve always been like this (dutifully, stubbornly present), so no hard feelings, ok?
Wednesday! We are here with a post about what I am experiencing in this carved out moment. Listening, stillness, seeing what unites me with the world I am in. Gratitude, beauty, the lessons of the silence.
lvs
09/06: loving the silence
Sometimes I feel guilty for loving the silence, for living my hours slowly and sweetly alone, accompanied only by consideration and contemplations.
Sometimes it feels selfish, like the world is waiting for me to participate, waiting to receive something that I could be giving. Instead, I find myself always taking it all in. To observe is such a treasured past-time — my little quiet mind buzzes with delight simply in seeing the way children stare at me as they walk by hand-in-hand with someone who is oblivious, or perhaps accustomed to, their blunt curiosity; by the way ants seem to move sporadically but with purpose towards a common goal; by the flicker of light that bounces golden off the wings of a cicada; by clouds that move like paper cutout animations, each shape and wisp unchanged as they creep across the skyline.
Perhaps silence has become my form of resistance in a boisterous, clattery world. It feels as though every human I meet wants my attention so badly, as if there is always something to be said and demanded. Even in conversation, we’ve become used to getting what we want. Fast food, fast chatter. Idleness. Laziness. Nothing of substance. Not everything needs to be said — that goes for me, too. Taking a break away from writing and sending said writing has allowed me to burrow into my mind a little deeper — like a soft, brief hibernation — to consider what is of significance to me (and perhaps, to you). Each day, I have so many thoughts. Each day, a myriad words and images and ideas visit me. Must they all be captured and tied down and sold off like cattle to be butchered and eaten? I don’t think so. Some thoughts just want meadows to roam in; to remain wild and untethered.
Less is always more. An adage I find especially true in an age of excess and in overwhelmingly clamorous digitalscapes. In spaces where we are inundated with every kind of consumable, it’s more than nice to simplify what’s on our plates — it’s necessary. As someone who wishes to do this more myself, it’s hard to justify sending out 3 or 4 newsletters per week. What if I am just adding to the noise? Another variation of the same dish on a buffet table that won’t be touched? Another email in an inbox of promotions and updates and offers and discount codes and news roundups — wasted money and wasted time. I mean, think of it: brands are spending money to write and design the emails you just send to trash. It’s not physical waste, but it’s waste all the same.
What do we even value anymore? I wonder, but have decided not to follow that train of thought wherever it’s going. Nowhere good, probably.
In this smorgasbord of information and ideas, in a world that covets and desires so much that it will do absolutely nothing with, I am learning to simplify and trim down the many facets of my life that have become convoluted.
It’s a leisure, I know, to sit in the silence of the yawning day, to observe the things that do not demand anything. Blazing sunsets, fat dragonflies, the last of the hydrangeas (in Ontario they are this gorgeous melange of white and pink), golden hour, the hot hum of cicadas, a low-hanging mulberry, a cat sleeping on a shaded chair. It feels so luxurious to have nothing to say and nothing to prove and nothing to respond to with words. It feels so rich to allow silence to create cushions of space around objects and activities and people. In doing so, it’s almost as if they are preciously separated from the clutter and given a place of prominence, allowing me to intentionally enjoy and appreciate their distinct qualities. I am learning how to reciprocate to such things with fullness of heart — to listen, smell, and enjoy in a way that is not resistant to the blessing they offer. Not eager to give an idea or give an opinion or make a mark, the practice of silence and the discipline of slowness does this one thing well: it forces you to receive. As Brother David Steindl-Rast says, “Leisure is the expression of detachment with regard to time. For the leisure (of monks) is not the privilege of those who can afford to take time; it is the virtue of those who give to everything they do the time it deserves to take.”
And doesn’t the beauty of nature, the sweetness of silence, deserve ample time? This space is one of deep revelation — which we desperately need at this time in history. It’s a revelation of self and other, to the cosmic grandeur among us. It’s a revelation that invites us to consider that we are united in more ways than ideas and beliefs and colours and language. We are united by a spirit of life. We are united by song. We are united by the hearts that beat inside us. I sway and allow the breeze to move me just like the trees. I speak with intention just like the humpbacks do. My heart pumps like the little creature at my feet or pitter-pattering on the roof. I too call out with desire and longing like the birds. When did we forget there is more that unites us than separates us, even among the inhuman things? And if I can find kinship with whales and trees, I can certainly find kinship with the species I belong to.
In silence, I can now enjoy the banquet of beauty that creation has laid. Little bites of sensuous sounds and visions and fragrances begin to fill me. There’s no need to discuss what side you’re on, and who you belong to. No need to explain yourself. There’s no misunderstanding here. There’s no fighting for approval. I see them, they see me. I am one in the chorus singing. We are part of the same symphony. We are instruments being played, tuned to the blessed key of love. We belong to the same unraveling seasons and hours. To the same keeper of time that begets beginnings and endings. We are all the nourished and the nourishment.
They say beautiful things don’t ask for attention (and by they, I mean James Thurber, who wrote “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, which is also a good movie—I mean it’s so wonderful, isn’t it?), and that seems true if you look at the canon of quintessential beautiful things. These beings — they who do not ask for attention — are singing and dancing. They are leaping across seismic wave patterns, pouring out colour and vibrancy with unabashed abandon, and allowing currents to press them forward along. They are napping under canopies and hiding from the sun between bushes and grasses. They are crawling along sticky honeysuckle stems, and gathering nuts for the winter. They are existing as they are meant to, receiving from the bounty of creation. Nothing to prove, nothing to debate, nothing to do but taste and see.