Silence great and small

I saw the film Into Great Silence back when it was in town- what, a few months ago? The experience was nothing I'd ever experienced before, but I never was able to process it into anything I could share. Fortunately, Ponder Anew has a response that could just as well be mine.

Sound and silence move me in powerful ways. My brain responds to them. I need both in my life. But silence is incredibly difficult to come by, and when I finally find it, it's initially painful. The detox process for the sound addict is very, very uncomfortable.

It happens too often: I bombard myself with input. I start to get used to having music playing in the background, having the TV on when I do other things, listening to my books on tape instead of reading them. I get used to talking and talking, and listening to other people talk, and listening to many people talk very fast and all at once, and eventually my brain just wears out.

It's a crash. I have taken in so much and have processed so little of it that my brain simply runs out of memory. It refuses to take any more. I can only hear so much before I just can't hear any more.

Seeing Into Great Silence was like the first few days of being sober (I gather). For a few moments, the silence is nice. Then it's excruciating. It's not just the lack of sound but the visual silence, too: the review has it right when it says it's like watching a still life. A few minutes in, watching a statuesque monk at his prayers, and I started to get fidgety. Then I started to feel desperate. The temptation to move, to make some sound just to avoid being left with that awful, deafening silence, was overwhelming.

And then it got easier to bear, and easier, and eventually it even became refreshing. I even started to envy the monks, whose way of life gives them the liberty of not having to speak. Frankly, I'm still envious at times- when I'm interrupted at prayer, or when I know the only words I have are unkind, or when I'm just too overloaded to speak. There are so many times when I am socially obligated to make noise, when it would be better for me to let there be silence.

This is such a challenge for me, to allow myself some silence. It feels unproductive, awkward, inefficient. But it also, when I am in the midst of it, feels so fully human that it seems cruel to break it. How can I reclaim that freedom to be still, in the face of a supercharged, fast-moving world?