Silence

I miss silence.

I was struck by yesterday morning as I sat and read a portion of a biography of Miyamoto Musashi.  It was early Sunday morning.  No-one but The Ravishing Mrs. TB was up as I sat on the couch in the new Taigh an TB, sipping my coffee and reading, listening to the rabbits occasionally hop about or eat.  Church was hours later and unpacking had, for the short term, ceased.

I found such peace in that moment, such joy, such a sense of being recharged in my life.  The thoughts poured off of the page and into my brain and lodged themselves there, unlike so often where they seem to skitter off the top of my mind like birdseed.  There was a sense of truly taking in what I was read and having the luxury of actually chewing the thoughts over in my head, evaluating them, personalizing them, even thinking of ways that they could be applied in my life.

Why can I not find more time for such silence in my life?

I am a person of silences and quiet.  This is the world I grew up in; this is how I spent my time:  alone or in a small group of people, with time and space enough to take my thoughts and make them into shining gems to apply within my own life.  A place and time where dreams and thoughts and creativity flourished in the protective environment of freedom and peaceful aloneness.

Could this be one of the reasons that I so often find myself out of sorts now, lacking creativity and the energy to pursue it?  My life is hardly filled with silence now, rather with the seeming tsunami of sound and disturbance that comes from the living in the modern world.  My space is constantly filled with people and conversation and noise and the needs and wants of others. 

It is enough to drive anyone mad.

Perhaps the first step then is this:  to find a place in my life where, for 15 minutes (to start) I can be totally in peace and silence.  If for no other reason than to rediscover a now-unknown country:  to rediscover myself.