1 post tagged “quest for quietude”

There is certainly something to be said for quiet.

I went home to Cleveland this weekend, a place not known for its quiet.  My brothers were home with their respective dogs in tow, so our house is not a place known for its quiet.  But, I ended up sleeping on the living room floor and I'll tell ya, when everyone had gone to bed and I was lying there, trying to fall asleep, there was quiet and somewhere in its folds was a little peace.

We somehow tend to assume that silence and quiet are the same.  They are not.  Since I've started writing again, I find that silence fills a lot of my days.  I spend long stretches of time in spaces designed to block out noise, other's conversations, and the sounds of life.  It's those places in which the buzzing of fluorescent lights starts to wear on me.  There is no peace in that kind of silence.  My attention-deficit mind yammers along barely stopping long enough to catch its breath before launching into four separate conversations simultaneously. The tap of the keyboard always pushes through. That silence can drown a person.  It gives me anxiety and makes me run from it.

Quiet, though.  Quiet is not the absence of noise, like silence is, but the absence of want.  Quiet is rest. Several moments of quiet strung together can be peace.  And several stretches of peace strung together can become contentment.  Quiet is calm.  Even when there's noise, there can be quiet.

I have to remember that.  I've been mistaking silence for quiet for too long and it's taken it's toll; I find myself getting angry and scared when those stretches of silence leave me agitated and edgy.  I have to remember that one is not the other.  And start to look more readily for the state made possible by resting.

I'm in search of some quietude.