Silence is a thing of beauty but it is often taken for granted.
Oftentimes, silence gets a bad reputation because when 2 people are conversing, when the conversation runs dry and still…one person tries to break the quietness!
Sure, silence can feel uncomfortable for some.
But I am here to tell you to see this thing that has such a bad rep, instead, to be seen as a thing of magnificence.
I did not truly appreciate the beauty of silence until I drowned in noise for years. Automatic thoughts that constantly filled my head.
“You have to do this to be liked by people”
“You have to be ‘this’ kind of person”
“You need to have this in life and life would be perfect”
I kept a journal to get those thoughts out of my head and onto paper…but the journal quickly filled up with a superfluous amount of thoughts. It would not stop. Noise filled my head so much, I would go out drinking by myself to silence my head. A constant, numbing feeling of inferiority and it drove me to a deep depression.
I checked myself into therapy but the noise would still not stop… I sat in therapy for half a year telling my therapist about the noise in my head but the therapist was still not able to assist me.
And then like a gift from the heavens, I got hit by a car. My body flew 20 feet in the air and I was hospitalized in the intensive care unit.
I woke up in the hospital a month later in the hospital. When I awoke, I noticed something. Something odd that felt so foreign to me…
I noticed this wonderful thing in my head that had been a luxury to me for so many years—silence. No thoughts. No noise.
Just…
After I hired a personal injury lawyer and got my life back together, I started to truly appreciate how wonderful silence was living in my day-to-day life.
The noise about what I needed to do in life, who I needed to impress, how much money I needed to make…all got flushed away with this appreciation for just being alive. This realization has blessed me with this beautiful, glorious silence.
I want to pass along the message in this world that silence should be appreciated. We all take it for granted.
When have you ever thought about or appreciated not thinking and just being? Take a moment and appreciate it. Try it. It is liberating. I promise. Sit in a room or outside and just be. No thoughts. No noise. Just quiet stillness.
You might realize that when you do not have all this noise in your head constantly telling you what to do, how to behave or act…you will become self-empowered… and you will truly see the beauty of silence 🙂