Need Quiet Alone Time? The Gift of Being Still
I realized this week that I really need quiet time alone on a regular basis, and that what the stillness makes when I have that time to myself in silence, is invaluable.
You may be used to quiet, but I am not. And, I mean truly quiet, that pure quiet, where a rustle in the brush from a tiny bird is the only sound you hear in an hour as you sip your morning beverage feeling the heat of the liquid contrasted with the cold air on your skin. And, if you were to shut the glass double doors that look out onto the wild, you wouldn’t hear anything, except, what I like to call, the frequency of life.
I think I’ve been a city person for too long. Well, this is the thought that keeps arising in my mind over and over the last few weeks.
It seems to me, that a person is born, they grow up with a family (or a caretaker at minimum), and then they branch out into their adult life, with whatever work and social interaction they choose (or happen upon, depending on the person). These usually involve almost daily communication and vocation environmental sounds, as well as the sounds of the outside landscape. If you live in the suburbs, you have cars driving nearby, your neighbors chatting, and any other number of human life sounds – mowing, putting the garbage out, jumping in a pool, dogs barking, and so on.
If you live in a city, well then you understand the constant hum of activity I will now describe. It’s not just the clang of garbage collection at 6:30 a.m., the roar of a souped up car at 11 p.m., the sirens, or those yells from the street of half-decipherable words at random hours, where you open the balcony door and listen for a moment to check that no one is dying because you can’t quite tell if it’s drunken exuberance or a fight breaking out after the bar.
And, it’s not just the sounds from living so close to other humans, with their footsteps (or indoor basketball?), doors shutting, conversations, pipes flushing, elevators clanging, and constant neighborly hellos and how are yous in hallways and common spaces as you enter and exit. Also, on top of that, it’s the persistence of a different frequency than just life, humming all around you.
It’s your neighbors’ energy fields and emotional bodies that are so close, sometimes only feet away, which expand out and move through yours because they’re sitting right on the other side of that apartment wall. It’s the whir of regular traffic, the appliances seeming to buzz louder, all the surrounding cell tower waves, and the wifi from a thousand plus people piled into a city block flowing through and around you.
Not to mention the marketing and pressures you can’t seem to escape from billboards and store fronts and product displays, which are more intense in cities, let alone if you also watch television, movies, or go on social media, which of course apply to people everywhere. Even checking email can lead to seeing advertisements or receiving emails that tell a “story” that can influence your state of being from the outside. The subtle and overt energetic and physical perpetuation of society’s warped ideas of success, health, beauty, and general sense of what constitutes worth, all coming at you and generating the frequency of fear, are basically unavoidable in a city setting.
I think you get the picture. It’s like the volume of everything is turned way up.
Even if I leave the city for a bit, when I walk to the ocean’s edge or drive to hike mountains or in pristine forests, there’s always people meandering about or on the trail, or you can still hear traffic in the distance echoing through the old growth. The stillness, and time without another human being in sight, is hard to come by and only seems to last a few minutes, or maybe, if I’m lucky on occasion, a half hour.
A few times over the years, I have gone to ten day silent Vipassana Meditation sessions, where you meditate 10 hours a day and do not speak at all. The not speaking was profound. But, even with such a “retreat” (it is not a retreat, but for lack of a better term in this moment), I was still surrounded by people and all that comes with that, as a sensitive person. Yet, I remember when I would travel back to the city, after the ten days of silence, the sheer onslaught of stimulation after such prolonged time without, was very difficult. The human being is quite adaptable, and I realize that adapting well to something doesn’t mean we should choose to stay in that adaptation, or that it’s best for us.
You can see how all of this stimulation and external “noise” piles up and day after day, year after year. A human living with constant manufactured or human sound and energy and, calling it like it is, interference, likely has a harder time sensing into and hearing only themselves. It’s being surrounded by things that are more than just you with you.
After having grown up in the suburbs with constant interaction with others, I have now been what I would call a bonafide “city girl” for twenty years. I moved to New York City, then moved to Los Angeles, then became mobile, spending time in cities around the world for years – Panama City, London, Rome, Athens, Vancouver, Montreal, Victoria, Lisbon, Prague, Brussels, Budapest, Playa del Carmen, and so on. Even if I wasn’t in a city, or was, for example, on an island, I stayed where I could walk everywhere, which, de facto, meant I was in very close quarters with others.
Reasoning for my preference included that when I first moved to New York and then California, I wanted to pursue certain career paths that required being near those industries – which were in cities – and around people. After I packed up and went mobile, I still had certain aspirations that involved those requirements, but now, that is not the case, and so recently it was more about the fact that moving from country to country, I could not own a car, therefore city life was most practical. Plus I always loved – and still do – the culture of cities – the arts and variety. However, my priorities have shifted though I am still living in a city, currently Victoria, British Columbia.
This week, however, I rented a car and made my way up island to “the country,” booking a small solitary cottage that sits at the edge of a lake on a few acres of land at the epicenter of multiple trails running through nature. Here the wild is around me, there is snow on the ground, and the lake is frozen. Fog lays around so all the taller evergreens look like shadows and… it’s silent. The hum, whir, buzz, and evidence of human life, outside of my own, is gone.
I am free of needing to communicate with anyone, and for the first time in a long time, for consecutive hours melting into days, I am surrounded by stillness and alone. I can feel the release of the burden of constant cacophony (loud or hum drum). It’s like my energy field doesn’t have to manage anything extra, and it feels like relief.
It is like there is less coming at me to process, and so more of what’s flowing from me -from pure life source – is being felt. There’s more space, more breathing room, and less to get away from, and that has led to an opening that feels soft, relaxed, and creative. I find myself wanting to paint, write, and create my own healing musical sounds to match what I feel inside now that it’s not competing with car horns and door slams.
Sitting here, I can see a bird on the bare branches next to the lake. I’m pulled into the stillness, into being with just me. And it turns out, that creates more of what makes me, me. I can feel my own frequency rise and take up more space, time has slowed down, and I can hear the calling of my soul like it’s on a direct line, versus through a tin can phone with earplugs in and people messing with the string.
I’m sitting in the stillness, in the quiet, all on my own, feeling only me, and I really, really love it.
