In search of quiet
What’s on the other side beyond the noise?
Recently my yoga teacher gave me a string of mala beads to meditate with and told me that they’re the original meditation ‘app’. I had mentioned to her my reliance on apps and recordings for my meditation practice and how I have been feeling uncomfortable with always soundtracking my life. Her challenge to me for the next month is to meditate using the beads a few times a week and to try out some self-led yoga practice. I feel slightly panicky about this!
It’s not revelatory to say that life today is noisy. Being a human in 2023 means that noise comes at us from all directions. If you live in a city or even a town, there are the noises of traffic, sirens, planes, and the general bustle and busy-ness of life. Beyond that, there is the noise inside our homes - of work calls, phones, TVs, other people. We even soundtrack banal activities, like a walk around the block or cooking. We utilise videos for workouts and apps for meditations. Often, the silence of going it alone is too uncomfortable for many.
Interestingly, noise is both discomfort and comfort. We have an aversion to noise - being in London for the day is like a barrage to the senses for me. An annoying noise can be unbearable to endure (noisy eaters - I have to leave the room!). Noise can also be unnecessary clutter, both physical and mental. We’re told to ‘cut through the noise’ to get to the crux of things. Noise can be to-do lists and distractions from the activities we really want to do in life.
Whenever I do those life value exercises, one of mine always comes out as ‘space’. When the space gets squeezed out, I start to feel claustrophobic (unsurprising that I do get panic attacks in small spaces, like the Tube or lifts). The noisiness of life can equally make me feel like there is no space. I think the reason that I love nostalgia for the 90s is because it seemed quieter then. I crave quiet but can’t seem to carve it out for myself.
At the same time, noise is also comforting. When I’m home alone for the night, I leave the TV or radio on for some background noise to drown out any unusual noises that might frighten me. With the meditation apps, the noise of a teacher or background music track fills the silence and distracts me from my thoughts. The voice of the external teacher also tells me what to do so I don’t have to decide for myself.
Noise is also a way of distracting ourselves, and this is a clever strategy if we’re going through a painful time in our lives. For me, quiet times and having nothing to do can trigger a rush of feelings and thoughts about all that is hard in my life at that moment. Silence during meditation can find my thoughts wandering to how shit the experience of infertility is, for example, and this causes me to feel sad. It’s natural to have this, of course, but it’s also natural to want to push this away and only feel happy feelings and think nice thoughts. So we avoid quiet times.
As well as being uncomfortable, quiet or silence can also seem boring. We feel like we need to be constantly entertained or we will be bored, which we have learnt as children to be a bad thing. Being bored also feels like time that we could be using for doing something productive instead. But, if we reframe this, could boredom be an opportunity to stop, breathe, and recalibrate? Boredom might be the very space into which new creative ideas are born. I have my best ideas in the shower and I am definitely not feeling at the peak of entertainment there!
We can’t not mention social media here, the ultimate boredom eliminator and a noise that is always there in our modern lives. Social media has its place, for sure, but I once heard Dr Rangan Chatterjee say that the noise on social media drowns out his own thoughts and opinions. We lose track of what we think about things ourselves and instead our opinions can become those of others. This really struck a chord with me. I notice, for example, that whenever I finish a book or TV show, I always go online to read the reviews and see what other people think, as if my own views weren’t enough. Of course, we also need the time and space to reflect in the first place, instead of filling the gap left by the completed book or show immediately with the next one.
So for me, going without my meditation apps and soundtracks feels scary, and I can forgive myself for this because life without noise is uncomfortable for most of us. But what might be on the other side of pushing through this, what inner guide or voice might I be overriding with all this noise?
With the mala beads, my yoga teacher’s theory is that they give me the structure I crave from the meditation apps, and something to ‘do’, but that is still in a quiet that allows for my own thoughts and inner teacher to guide me. I will know when to stop without the klaxon of my phone timer startling me out of my reveries. It will no doubt be uncomfortable and boring, she said, pre-empting my feedback! I will almost certainly want to reach for my apps and find the soundtrack I am used to.
I have no idea how this experiment will go or if I will find anything in the quiet. Perhaps nothing. But perhaps the ability to be with myself and my thoughts, to know that everything is ok. To trust that I am the best guide for me, I have the tools I need already, and to know and value my own opinions. Can I really get all this from some beads? I’m certainly curious to try.