When was the last time you experienced significant and purposeful silence ? Was it right after you woke up ? Was it while you were in your car running errands ? Or can you not remember ? Does the thought of silence fill you with dread ? Or do you find it . . . boring ?
Many of us attempt to remove awkwardness and boredom from our day . But we shouldn ’ t fill every second of our waking hours with noise . And as numerous studies have shown , allowing ourselves to be bored can help lead to creativity , self-awareness , and better mental health .
Here ’ s a paradox of our current culture . We celebrate authenticity and awkwardness in others . We don ’ t want our role models , politicians , pastors , actors , professors to look and sound the same as they always have .
That ’ s wonderful . I ’ m all for it .
Yet , we personally don ’ t want to feel awkward . I ’ d argue the paradox of our culture is that we have undertaken an all-out war against awkward in our day . The death of awkward . Meaning we have removed any awkward space and pauses throughout the day . Anytime we remotely feel awkward , we escape . We quickly avoid that awkward space and fill it with our phones or some form of entertainment .
Yet , we are missing so much by removing boredom and awkward moments throughout our day . Our minds desperately need silence , awkwardness , and boredom .
We can ’ t let our days become an unending , unceasing cacophony of noise . If we do , how will we hear anything ? It ’ s like music . A great song can ’ t actually be a song without the silent pauses in between the notes .
Yet , we are frantically filling our minds with more , no matter what it is . Something . Anything . Just don ’ t let me sit here and think .
We are constantly filling these gaps in our days with more , which in turn is constantly giving us less . We ’ re actually draining our mental “ reservoir ” when we won ’ t stop adding to it .
The more anxious , awkward , and alone we feel , the more prone we are to jump on our phone . Being on our phone is more likely to lead us to feeling more anxious and alone , which heightens the struggle instead of alleviating it .
As I wrote in 101 Questions You Need to Ask in Your Twenties , “ When we remove all awkward , we remove all possibilities for unexpected amazing .”
If we ’ re going to listen to our day , then there have to be times when we ’ re not physically listening to anything else . I ’ ve recently been going on the same hike day after day , and I can ’ t help but notice how many people I pass who have some kind of earbuds in their ears . If they are hiking by themselves , around eight out of ten people I pass are listening to something . We ’ re all going to great lengths to be here , in this quiet , open space , and yet we can ’ t help ourselves from
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