What does silence mean to you?
If you can answer this question, you have already started the journey.
Questioning the silence in our lives creates an endless cobweb of discovery, trapping our thoughts and gathering up our deepest understanding of consciousness.
Many people would instantly connect the concept of ‘meditation’ with silence, which is perfectly natural. However, if we simply take the raw word and meaning of ‘silence’ and analyze its existence/ impact on our lives, we might just unravel more than we think.
Coming from a scientific standpoint, researchers following the Attention Restoration Theory have stated that silence has many positive affects on our brain and general health. Essentially the brain heals itself in a low levelled sensory state, recovering its cognitive abilities.
You might be thinking… ’silence is boring’ or ‘a waste of time’, but actually our productivity can be increased and improved by including a short time in silence in our daily routines.
‘Studies show that noise has a powerful physical effect on our brains, causing elevated levels of stress hormones. According to the Attention Restoration Theory, when you are in an environment with lower levels of sensory input, the brain can ‘recover’ some of its cognitive abilities.’
Azriel Reshel – Author at Uplift
‘Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation… tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation.’
Jean Arp – Sculptor/ Painter/ Poet
Research
As a part of this manifesto, I wanted to understand what other people thought about silence. To do this, I created an online survey with multiple questions and a test (which involved staying in silence for 5 minutes).
Survey – https://forms.gle/cfYBSRBMuVVVod3p9
The Results
The motive behind this questionnaire was to initiate the discussion of what silence means to us and to explore the mindfulness behind it of it.
5 Minute Test
The participants were told to…
- Find a silent place
- Get rid of any distractions
- Close your eyes and enjoy the silence (calm down any initial frantic thoughts and listen, remember to breath in and out slowly)
- Finish with a deep inhale and exhale
Keeping in mind that this test isn’t rooted in meditation, only examining our reaction to silence, many fed back saying how meditation came to mind when taking the test.
This survey contains very insightful data, as we can see that the majority of people find silence peaceful, but also many fear it due to the worry of listening to the reality of their thoughts etc.
Even as I am writing right now I can hear many different things such as scraping noise outside, crashing of dishes downstairs, people talking, the tapping of my fingers against the keyboard. All these little sounds create the reality in our minds today. When they are completely taken away, it’s down to us to deal and manage with the silence.
Personally I have a huge struggle to find silence in my day-to-day life due to living in the city, and living with other people. But when I manage to find it, I treasure it as much as I can and feel a cleansing from the experience.
Video Documentary
To continue this manifesto, I created a 10 minute video documentary focusing on the argument of silence. A few of the participants who took the questionnaire were asked to take a short clip of themselves giving their opinions on silence and how it affects their everyday lives. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the video footage wasn’t taken by myself but by the participants, so this meant they also could feel more relaxed and free to talk about the topic in a familiar environment. At this point the outbreak in Italy was very high, so many were in self isolation. Therefore some of the participants were able to really immerse themselves into thought on the discussion, and spent quality time preparing what they wanted to say.
Behind the Scenes
Creating this video has been an insightful experience. I used Premiere Pro to create an engaging video, and used audio clips and eye-catching images to give a narrative to the manifesto. When editing the video clips of the participants talking, I had to consider which parts were the most important and use the clipping tool to make the flow and momentum more consistent.
I main purpose of this piece is so that you can also reflect on your opinion and sentiments on this topic. The video is informative, but ends in a question – reflecting everything back to you as the audience.
Written Manifesto
A world of business creates no space
for time, for concentration, for reality.
The comfort in a gentle humming in the
back of our consciousness leaves no room
for thoughts, for contemplation, for yourself.
A humming turns to a crashing, to a noise
masking an empty sigh, or a rolling eye.
The hunger we bury with activities,
that famished reality is confirming the
fact that we need to have…
Silence.
But in that place of lack of noise,
an even bigger reality takes its place.
As anxiety creeps over, our thoughts become
a long lost enemy fighting itself into existence.
That lost gentle humming becomes a heart beat.
That ringing in your ear becomes a pulsating
rhythm that you can’t run or hide from.
These noises, these voices, are who you are inside.
Now you cannot hide,
your vulnerability is what’s come to life.
And your choice is to either embrace or hide… in the silence.
This is a written piece that I created at the beginning of the project when exploring my initial thoughts on silence. When creating this project, the biggest battle was to find a place without noise.
Do you ever have the sensation there’s too much noise around us?
If you listen carefully, you can hear a constant droning of noise in the background. Many of us are used to naturally tuning out noise, which could have been due to having a noisier, and busier upbringing. That tolerance and disinterest for it could be seen as a god send, or instead an insensitivity.
The constant sound of chattering, and noise coming from the TV can make us feel less lonely and more accompanied. Whereas others of us, like myself, find the constant humming slightly irritating, and at high noise levels somewhat unbearable. Many go to lengths of buying noise-cancelling headphones, or purposely finding a silent space to escape to in order to find some kind of peace.
Noise experts state that noise causes stress and damages our health. Article ‘Science Daily’ explains how noises from aircraft or traffic while we are sleeping can increase hypertension (even if in deep sleep). This means noise could act as a ‘silent’ killer in our society.
“I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in silence, and the truth comes to me.”
Albert Einstein
Extreme Examples of Living in Silence
In history, there have been groups of people who chose to live in silence.
The Desert Fathers, from around the third century AD, were Christian monks/ hermits who lived primarily in the Scetes desert in Egypt. The desert they inhabited was one of the most silent places in the world. The constant silence and dry, warm environment it has would be seen as a challenging place to live nowadays. These Desert Fathers prayed and seeked inner peace centered in their love of God. It drove their whole sense of being, and they are known to have been welcoming, friendly people. The Desert Fathers by Helen Waddell talks about this very society and discusses how living in silence could act like in our lives today.
If we could cut out the unnecessary noise in our society, such as using silent electric cars, or creating machines with lower noise immission, we might begin to see our effectivity and health improve.
If you can, try to stay in silence for 5 minutes, and see how it impacts you.
References + Media Used
https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music?nv=1
https://pixabay.com/videos/search/running/
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1pw6jtTAuvzS2GEy0eOJrkej3Nf19ZJg4jglPiflAjZU/edit#responses
https://upliftconnect.com/science-says-silence-is-vital-for-our-brains/
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/silence_1
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080213090530.htm
https://upliftconnect.com/science-says-silence-is-vital-for-our-brains/
https://www.lifehack.org/377243/science-says-silence-much-more-important-our-brains-than-thought
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_restoration_theory
https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/free-ambient-background-tracks/
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