The sound of silence

When was the last time you sat in complete silence?

No noise, no distractions – just you and your thoughts.

If you’re anything like me, these moments have become increasingly rare.

Background noise is everywhere – in restaurants, offices, and on public transport, where ‘silent’ carriages are more theory than reality.

The virtual world has turned even louder. An endless stream of opinions vies for our attention, fuelling the urge to react to whatever sparks the outrage of the day.

It’s not just overwhelming on a purely sensory level – although for many neurodivergent and highly sensitive people, the constant barrage of noise can leave us feeling particularly drained and exhausted.

There’s a deeper problem:

What if we’re losing the ability to truly hear ourselves, to reflect and think without the constant influence of outside opinions?

Here’s an uncomfortable truth:

It’s hard to hear our own voice when we’re constantly exposed to other people’s voices.

What do I really value?

What do I really care about?

These questions can easily slip away from us when they are drowned out by societal pressures and expectations.

Growing older, my biggest fear is not that I won’t have accomplished enough.

My fear is that I was so distracted by the noise of daily life that I didn’t spend enough time asking myself what was truly important to me in the first place.

The fear recently hit me as I sat alone on a rock overlooking Lake Geneva at sunset, my phone tucked away in the deposit box of my hotel room.

It was a calm, windless evening, with water flowing gently around me, reflecting the colors of the clouds as day gave way to night.

It was the first moment of true stillness I had experienced in months.

And it moved me to my core.

Sitting in silence is hard. It’s uncomfortable. Often, we’d rather escape back into the noise to avoid the discomfort of our own feelings. External stimulation can easily become an emotional crutch: something we lean on to avoid our inner fears. I, for one, often find myself gravitating to distraction when I feel lonely, inadequate, or uncertain – which is more often than I’d like to admit.

But silence can also be our best friend.

It helps us identify what truly matters to us. It makes us feel pain, love, sadness, hope, and other emotions that can propel us into action.

It teaches us how we can spend our finite time on earth in more meaningful ways.

It lets us accept our imperfect selves a bit more – and shows us who we could become with effort and intentionality.

Sitting by the lake, I was reminded that a regular stillness practice can be one of the most wholesome things we can do – for ourselves and for those whose lives we touch.

It helps us tune out the world’s noise for a moment, so we can finally hear what our heart has been trying to tell us all along.

Photo: Sunset at Lake Geneva in late November, with soft pastel skies reflecting on still water and rugged rocks leading into the foreground.