"I'm as strong as a rock, but a word can destroy me. What am I?"
-Ed Nygma, "Gotham" S2 E14: "This Ball of Mud and Meanness"
Our world is full of bustling people going from one thing to the next without much of a break between. Most people have some kind of an agenda and don't vary from it if they can help it. If you sat on a street corner and just watched, what would you see? People constantly on their phones texting or calling friends and coworkers, checking what they need to do next, and just trying to get from point A to point B as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Why do we feel the need to pack our days with events and meetings and to always need to be doing something? We constantly have some kind of schedule that we feel the need to adhere to. I find it difficult, personally, to step away from a schedule. It gives a sense of togetherness and productivity. Some people thrive off of a schedule and need that sense of routine, or else without it they wouldn't know what to do throughout the day.
Have you figured out the riddle that Edward Nygma posed to Detective Gordon (in case you don't know, that's the future Riddler and the future commissioner of Gotham in the Batman universe)? The answer is silence. What if we were to take a step back from our busy lives and enjoy a little bit of just silence? From time to time, you might here your friends talk about going camping or hiking to "get away from it all". In reality, that sounds like a good plan to, in a sense, push the reset button.
Lately I haven't been working much due to neither of my two jobs needing me to work throughout the week. I've learned that it's OK to not have a set agenda for the day. I've learned to take my time in doing things and to not rush through everything. Most of my days are spent in my room watching TV, writing, reading, doing chores and other things. Sometimes I even just sit in my room and listen to the hum of the air conditioner. It can be relaxing and almost therapeutic to just sit and do nothing.
If you try this yourself, beware that you are essentially trapping yourself in your thoughts and your thoughts alone. It can drive you crazy only listening to yourself for so long. I still plan meetings with friends and have some kind of human contact while my roommate is gone at work all day.
We can enjoy the silence, but we shouldn't be consumed by it. Isolation for a long time can take its toll on anyone, and can have the opposite of the intended effect. Take some time to just step away and just breathe, but don't live in that for too long.
When we take a step back from everything, we can see the big picture of our lives sometimes. It's like looking at a painting in detail, and then stepping away from it to see the big picture. When we're caught up and involved in something, we don't fully see what's going on around and outside of ourselves. The constant noise of life can be overwhelming, and we might not be able to hear the absence of sound. As Leopold Stokowski put it, "A painter paints pictures on canvas. A musician paints their pictures on silence". We can still paint the picture of our life with silence, and not constant noise.
"People writing songs
That voices never share
And no one dare
Disturb the sound of silence"
-Disturbed, "The Sound of Silence" (Originally by Simon & Garfunkel)
