Why are people afraid of silence

We strained silence does not make... (Mandelstam)

I'm sitting in a train Moscow-Petersburg. I came before the other passengers, and now see how they are in the car, find your seats, get undressed and put the bags in the Luggage compartments, and in General, strongly excited. All of them, especially the young, are charged with one rhythm, same energy, lapping at them, overflows, spills in jokes, laughter, vigorous movements.

But everyone was seated, the mourners got out of the car, and the train moves off slowly and gradually picks up speed. And here it starts to happen something incomprehensible to me. Something funny and somewhat disturbing.



Being alone with themselves and their stillness, which dictates the position you as a passenger on a numbered and very limited space, passengers, as the team climb into bags, pockets, pull out mobile phones and bury your nose in them.

It looks weird. Whether funny, or creepy.

Psychosis is gaining momentum and the majority starts to call someone and tell them they are in the train and are on the way. Then, when a collective call is complete, owners of cell phones sit a while quite still gazing stupidly at the screen and clutching their toys as lifebuoys. Someone out there spinning a game and someone not, but something to continue to do, to participate in the "active life", the word to be yourself, otherwise...

Otherwise we risk to remain in silence.

So why are we so afraid of peace and quiet? Why we feel uncomfortable when they are alone with themselves.

Why is so desperately uncomfortable when life offers us such an opportunity?

Recently re-released the wonderful book by Belgian writer Maurice Metterlink, the man whose play about the Blue bird is still going on stages around the world. The book is called "the Treasure of the humble" and in it there is another story about the train.

About how two passengers, being in one compartment, start to feel unclear discomfort of stillness. Mobile did not yet exist, and therefore both in a hurry to start a conversation. What is not important. The most empty and meaningless – if only not to remain in this silence, from which they are afraid, if only not to remain silent.

What's going on? They are afraid to be alone with the quiet the truth about yourself, the writer says. The truth is silent, "he continues," and be in the silence alone is scary enough. Why? Yes, because we ourselves are frankly boring and painfully uninteresting, and we need, in order to escape from their own worthlessness and emptiness. This is the first.

And secondly, who says we need the truth about yourself and the world who said we so long to hear her quiet, not knowing the beginning and end of presence that unites the world in its beauty and creative power – and the stars and the trees and the sea and your roommate on the trip? Sometimes, in poetry, in music or in moments of love flashes her presence, smile, magical smile you flash at an unprecedented picture well enough, and enough.

But do we not live in truth, not in reality? – we ask ourselves. And I say no. For the most part we walk away from it without even noticing.

Let us reflect a bit. Just a little bit.

We communicate with each other and the world in 90 percent with the help of intelligence. Talk with others, order the tickets, ask for directions, write essays, take exams, etc., etc. – all of this intelligence, a good thing, but limited.

Now ask yourself — what time is it there? And will have to answer that in the past. Because intelligence is just memory, is the memory of past accumulated information. And so when I rely on intelligence and I do it most of the day – me, well, I can not be at the point of "here and now", where is the event itself, reality itself. Because I am in intelligence, and it is in the past, that has passed, what is now gone.

One word I can find in what is not located in a virtual space, cleverly separated from that which actually exists. In this virtual break a lot of things – spinning multiplication table, the memory of parties, conversation, rules of behavior, motive B. G., the belief that Britney Spears sucks, the memory of my wrongs or pleasures, the TV show etc. And as I communicate with others, I do include in the conversation is your memory, your virtual, and the other feeds him their virtual.

Therefore, psychologists say that people hear the interlocutor of approximately 5-7 percent. The rest, 95 percent of their own thoughts.

So I would argue that we all most of the time are within a large virtual machine (without there electronic "Matrix") which they themselves create. And we all (almost all) like it, this is amazing.

More than that – sitting down at the vanity, as on the needle, I barely take the silence and stillness. And if we are in silence it turned out — comes to the aid of a mobile, headphones, or handheld computer...

The silents have an interesting property. She drags the man out of the memory of the past, of the virtual of the confusion of thoughts and feelings and seeks to put him in a situation "here and now", in the situation of reality.

Silence aims to bring back the man his right to be offering to withdraw for a moment from the demands of "have". I remember once walking down Nevsky, thinking about ten things at once, and suddenly there was silence, and through me and the street and the people around fell silent, the music, and the world gained depth, mystery and meaning, and through me Tek Life itself, and nothing to me more in those few seconds was not necessary. — Let it remain", — I muttered, — all the rest is not important, let it remain. Because it was happiness that I cried. And I put on sunglasses so as not to frighten passersby with their incomprehensible happiness. Silence enveloped me then, and I woke up and I saw.

Re-read Pushkin's poem "the Prophet" — it about it. About how you are in reality larger than you everyday, roll up, noisy, tortured and programmed.

"In the silence God utters his word," said another poet. In silence is where the meaning of our life, and we meet with themselves with both mystery and joy. And maybe one day heard in the silence of the word on ourselves, we don't want more to part with it, because that's the exit from the domestic shallow water in the Ocean of life, and the best of us have yet to discover.

Author: Andrew T - (A. Suzdaltsev)

Source: /users/1120

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