It just hit me! The sound of silence is comfortable again!
Last year I had the goal of meditating regularly. I had noticed that I had become uncomfortable with silence, which never used to be the case. From my herbal background I had learned that not being comfortable with silence was also an indicator of poor health. So, I thought, regular meditation was much needed back in my life.
The meditation was helpful, but not easy. I struggled even into this year’s IHC to do it remotely well. Quieting my mind has been very difficult. Journaling helped. The first half of my current physical journal is pretty much a dumping ground for thoughts, just to get them out of my head, whether they were good, bad, or indifferent. Sort of a “verbal diarrhoea” on paper. Once I got that out of my system, journalling turned into more of a contemplation; the “thinking on paper” that has been mentioned in one of my other blogs. It continues to progress and evolve, and I feel like things are starting to congeal into something that makes more sense and is more useful to me. It’s all been useful but for different reasons.
“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.”
~Jean Arp
Society doesn’t seem to value silence, contemplation, or meditation. If you can’t be seen to be working then you must not be working and therefore it’s a waste of time. It doesn’t seem to value sleep either, since the answer to so many questions about time management is to set your alarm earlier. Keep doing that and you won’t be able to get any sleep at all, and sleep is where we heal, among other things.
Suddenly, I find myself thinking of the lyrics to the Simon and Garfunkel song, The Sound of Silence, which Garfunkel said was about the inability of people to communicate with each other. Seems we don’t communicate very well with ourselves either.
“Few people even scratch the surface, much less exhaust the contemplation of their own experience.”
~ Randolph Bourne
Numbers
Pushups/equivalent: 2737
Sit-ups/equivalent: 2034
Weapon Form: 281
Hand Form: 290
RAoK: 91
Sparring: 145
Kilometres: 1224
Memorize “Mastery”: finally got working on it again
Nurture Relationships: no progress this week.
Blogging: 32
Declutter my life: got a little more decluttering done on Saturday. Two more boxes out of the way.
Great Coat project: no progress this week
It doesn’t seem to value sleep either, since the answer to so many questions about time management is to set your alarm earlier.”
Setting your alarm clock earlier is a far cry from devaluing sleep. Getting up ten minutes earlier is not a destructive habit if you have the full picture in mind; food, bedtime routine, self care during the day will affect sleep much more than an alarm clock set ten minutes earlier.
If a presented tool is of no use to you, then don’t use it. But please do not discredit it and reduce its viability and effectiveness for others. When it’s mentioned that a lack of time can be addressed by setting an alarm clock earlier, it…