I Want To Have More Silence In My Life

By John McLachlan

In my post Ten Romantic Reasons For Living Out Beyond the ninth reason I gave was that I’d like more silence in my life.

Perhaps it’s not silence I crave, but rather quietness. I’m not sure.

I’ve had very few experiences with silence in my life to know what it’s really like. Silence brings me face-to-face with myself and I suspect that’s why people often avoid silence at all costs, even if they don’t know they are avoiding it. It’s probably why we turn to music, TVs and radios to avoid being alone with ourselves.

I like the climate of Vancouver’s summer except for one aspect of it: noise. Because windows need to be left open, the sound from the street is very obvious and prevalent on summer afternoons and evenings. These sounds include general traffic, sirens, loud truck engines, motorcycles (of which I truly wish could be eliminated from the face of the planet for their incredible noise) and just the general din of the city. It’s fine for a while, but after a day of it, I find it exhausts me.

I wonder about what constant noise does to our brains. It’s almost as if we need “noise screen” like we need “sun screen.” There’s the obvious issue of hearing damage but it’s more than just that. It’s the toll it takes on our nerves. No wonder everyone got in a fight in Spike Lee’s movie Do The Right Thing.

Is silence just absence of noise?

To think about silence, I would suggest that it first needs to be looked at in relation to noise. I think of silence as falling into two categories.

Small Silence (in that there isn’t much of it).

This is the whole environment that includes both audible noise which comes from the obvious things (sounds you hear) and, for lack of a better term, “non-audible” noise.

That non-audible noise could be thought of as the “energy” of a place such as an active city. It’s a place with lots of stimulation. Most cities would fall into this category. A city such as New York is a good example. It’s noisy to the ears, but it’s also noisy from the frenetic energy that exists from all the people, ideas, activities and tension.

Big Silence.

In the audible sense, it would be places that have few sounds and the sounds that do exist are not loud. This would include nature or a quiet building that has little or no mechanical devices running (fridge, washing machine, dish washer, coffee maker, kettle). In the non-audible sense, it would include places that have a feeling of being silent. Ever stood in a forest on a windless day, stared at the stars on a calm night or sat in an abandoned building? That’s Big Silence!

In these places, some of what makes them seem so silent is what meaning we bring to them but whatever the reason, the feeling can be quite overbearing and significant and depending on our outlook or emotional state, can affect us deeply.

Many people can’t stand to be in this kind of silence. It scares them. I think it may be because we come face to face with ourselves and that’s something we rarely do in the din of a city or with our two ears stuffed with little speakers blaring into our brains.

Silence can scare me. When I’ve spent time on my own at my family’s summer house on Hornby Island, I’ve had some very soul-searching experiences because of the silence. The silence doesn’t let you fool yourself or divert from the thoughts in your head. As scary as this was, I’m very glad that I’ve had these experiences because they’ve moved me along and helped me see things differently.

Building silence in.

One of the requirements for me in the house that we build is that it be well-insulated to ensure it can be a very quiet environment when we want it to be. I suspect having a green roof will help in this respect (especially with rain) and I know our architect also designs houses with roofs that have curves and different shapes to them versus blocky square corners that get hit by wind and react noisily.

I know one thing, there will be a lot more silence living out beyond.