Sunday Morning Reflection: Sitting Alone With my Thoughts

It is very quiet in the house...

Perhaps my single most favorite thing about going to my Auntie's house — whether as a little kid or as a grown up well into my thirties when she passed — was that within 20-30 minutes of my arriving there the silence would begin.

My auntie's summerhouse; scanned from a 1990s photograph

Upon arrival, the volume of the background roar and chaotic energy of greater outside life would lower and eventually fade away to be replaced by almost complete silence.

The house was built in the 1930s and even up into the 1990s not much had been done to modify or update it to newer standards. The implication of that was that none of the modern "noise making conveniences" were present.

It is amazing just how much ambient noise there is in our world, even when we are certain that "nothing" is going on.

There is always the invariable background sound of traffic on nearby roads, airplanes overhead, distant construction sites and factories, efficient equipment from refrigerators, to freezers, to washing machines to electronic equipment on standby mode to pollute the aural landscape of our world.

Window to the "great room," circa 2010

Those sounds all seemed to fade away and almost completely disappear at my Auntie's house.

I would often sit on the semi-circular couch in the "great room" and just look out across the lawn and let my brain go slack. The only sound would be the ticking of the mechanical clock on the wall and any breeze in the trees outside; the sound of birds and insects buzzing by. Because the house had a thatched roof it acted like a giant cushion of sound insulation, catching and absorbing most outside environmental noise and keeping it from coming inside.

It was my favorite time, and it was very healing, and it also served to repeal repair my somewhat tattered sense of self. I felt able to actually think and process my world.

As I write these words, I also realize that lots of people are made enormously uncomfortable by the idea of having to be alone with their thoughts, with nothing going on and no activities to be engaged in.

We live in a world that has largely "trained" us to feel like we are missing out on something, or we are being lazy and useless, if we're not eternally engaged in some form of activity.

In a sense, it makes me think of the old truism that we are — in fact — human BE-ings, not human DO-ings!

I am currently writing these words on my laptop, sitting in the quietest room of our house... which faces away from the street and out towards the bay with the ocean beyond, and which is also the furthest away from anything that generates ambient noise. Interestingly enough, we have an old fashioned mechanical grandfather clock in the room and it was its steady ticking that reminded me of sitting in the great room at my auntie's house!

Unlike that distant past, I will not have the luxury of being able to sit here for days; I will only remain until I finish typing this and then I have to resume my work day. Because there are always things to be done, and I have an event to go to (out of town) next weekend, to set up as a vendor with my artwork at a conference.

But for the moment, I am enjoying the silence!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great week ahead!

How about you? Do you like the thoughts inside your head going still? Or are you more comfortable with something going on, all the time? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)

Created at 2024.04.28 15:13 PDT
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