The Need of Silence

AA: Du berör något som jag anser är tabu i vårt samhälle. I det offentliga rummet blir jag dagligen översköljd av oljud som jag tvingas acceptera för att om jag inte gör det så är jag en gnällig gubbe.

The Need of Silence

Since then*, silence does not leave me. I’d say it waits for me. It is true that I live alone, with a solitary job, in a depopulated village. But office employees who have families, who live in the big cities and go home by train can hear it too. In the evening, when the city has calmed down, when their children are in bed, and when sleep doesn’t come, it is delivered to them confidentially. The worries of that day or of the next one might well occupy their minds - they are free to remember that silence awaits them. 

Christian Combaz: Éloge de l’age 

*(Experiencing a moment of deep silence as a child at a funfair)

I cannot remember a specific moment when I discovered Silence as a child; instead the need for it grew slowly but steadily underneath the surface until at a certain point I got enough of all the hustle and bustle of city life and retired into another "depopulated village”. It might sound strange, but I feel that this growing need for silence is preparing me for old age. Like Combaz says: "Old age marks the reunion of each man with silence."

Our modern society stuffs us with a lot of unnecessary noise and activities to prevent us from living fully, from finding out what our lives are about, how we most deeply want to live them and why we are here. These questions can only be answered in silence, when we have turned inward and our minds have fallen quiet.

I don’t know about you, but the older I get, the more I need silence. There is an urge to get to know myself fully and by that, the condition of Man. Once death comes, I want to meet it as the natural fulfilment of a consciously lived life and with a peaceful mind, opened up in silence.