Silence is golden

For Londoners, the thought of silence can seem like a foreign concept.

An orchestra of noise follows us throughout the day. From the workers digging up the street outside your bedroom window at 7am, to the clatters and screeches of the tube journey on the way to do your daily business.  Depending on where you spend your day there may be keyboards clattering, phones ringing, conversations flying, machines drilling, cars beeping or engines revving.

If you’re lucky you can block it all out with an ipod, but any way you look at it, London is a very noisy place to be.

After all the hustle and bustle of the day you would think that a little peace and quiet would be just what the doctor ordered.  Actually the first thing people usually do when they get home is to sit down with an old friend, one who keeps them entertained until it’s time to brush their teeth and go to sleep – the telly.  For many of us bed time is the only time we allow ourselves a moment of peace for the entire day.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.

After a while the noise can sort of become a comfort to us, and when it’s not there we feel anxious.  Fact is that we love to keep our minds occupied all the time for the same reason we reach for the television remote whenever there is nobody in the house to talk to – to distract ourselves from the anguish of sitting alone with our thoughts.

It might sound strange, but we are actually scared of what we may encounter if we were to simply sit quietly for a moment.

Sitting in one spot with your eyes closed not doing anything seems like a pretty odd thing to do. Besides, even if there were any therapeutic benefits to such an “activity”, it’s time you could spend watching the latest 19 year old tennis starlet dance around the court, or in your girlfriend’s case, painting her nails and pretending she doesn’t notice.  “Normal people”, when they want to relax seek a cigarette or a pint, or to switch off entirely seek wide-screen entertainment.  Right?

None of these things can compare to the bliss experienced after a few quiet moments listening to your breath.