My cousin likes to sleep with the ceiling fan on. She keeps it on not for its cooling ability but to maintain a certain degree of white noise at night. Otherwise, she claims, she cannot fall asleep.
While sharing a bedroom with her, I would lie awake at night watching the fan spin endlessly and will myself to go to sleep. Tossing and turning, I could not comprehend how someone could need noise to feel at ease, while I could barely block it out.
After a few nights with the fan on, I stopped hearing it. The gentle murmur evolved from something foreign to my ears to something almost comforting. The fan simply became part of the background like the TV we turn on when we’re doing housework, or the radio in the car when we drive to the office. It wasn’t so much that we want to watch or listen, but instead we simply want something to drown out the deafening silence.
It is rare in this day and age that we are left alone with ourselves in complete and utter silence. At work we are surrounded by people, at home we have a plethora of technology to distract us, and even when we go jogging our i-Pod is our constant companion. Only in the few moments when we fall asleep at night are we encompassed by the flurry of thoughts that run through our mind, and even then we are often counting sheep or the turns of a fan. The truth is, we all claim to want nothing more than “peace and quiet” but we actually work so hard to ensure that we never have it.
What exactly are we trying to escape in the silence? Our own thoughts?
My friend recently told me that on her latest trip she had a 3 hour layover which she decided to use as an opportunity to write in the journal she had been neglecting. Deciding to write without her music on, she found herself pouring out thoughts that had no idea even existed in her mind. What she was writing when her surroundings were completely cleared of any white noise was almost shocking to her, as these were all the thoughts she had worked so hard to deny.
And I’m sure she’s not the only one. When I’m left alone in a darkened room unable to fall asleep, the thoughts I try not to think creep up from my subconscious to take a prominent place in the forefront of my mind. Often the questions that arise in those moments of fleeting silence I have no answers to, and the uncertainty that leaves me with almost frightens me.
Is white noise the bandaid we place over our deepest fears in the hope that if we change the dressing enough we may never actually have to deal with our darkest thoughts? Are we afraid of what we might actually think if we leave ourselves alone in the silence?
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
white noise
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7 comments:
I absolutely love it!! There's so much truth and depth in it.. And I always think about this issue; the "never being completely alone with your thoughts"; you never get to spend any quality time with just yourself, your thoughts and ideas anymore; but it is something necessarily to keep remembering who you really are, what you really think and how you really feel. It is so hard to just detach from all the external factors though.
Hmmm I wonder what awesome, beautiful cousin you speak of...haha
I love it Maya. It is true that we have a hard time being alone in silence. I know that my need for the white noise when I sleep is stems from my being an over thinker. I already overthink everything during the day but at night it is so much worse because I do not have anything distracting me. That is why i have to have a fan on... even if it's freezing outside.
I was just in a wedding a couple of days ago. I had been trying to write my maid of honor speech for over a week. Everything I wrote felt so forced and unoriginal. I finally turned off Explosions in the Sky, which is the instrumental band I listen to while working or reading and within 20min I wrote an amazing speech. I didn't realize that the only thing that changed was the music being turned off until I was reading your blog.
Thumbs up lady!
http://simplynoise.com/ is amazing. Also spa radio on Pandora provides some great music to fall asleep or relax to if you ever get tired of white noise. It's actually addicting.
It's scary that in today's world we are constantly trying to escape everything--first from the city, then to the city, then from school, then back to school, and now from silence? I can always work better with white noise in the background than I can with silence. It's so weird.
Zeina--I agree that it is of absolute importance that we give ourselves some "alone time" with our thoughts because otherwise we never really know what we're thinking deep down inside. We're so preoccupied with daily events, reminders, work, etc that we don't have time to THINK about the more profound things in our lives.
Hass--uhmm gee I kinda forgot you like the fan on...I was talking about another completely awesome and gorgeous cousin of mine... ;) glad your speech went well!! You looked beautiful :)
Maher--a white noise channel? That's crazy!! I'm actually a big fan of silence before I sleep, I like the room to be pitch black and quiet enough to hear a pin drop! As for always trying to escape, I think that's just part of the human condition--we are perpetually dissatisfied with the status quo!
Love the post Maya! You always get me to think :P:P
Yay I love Explosions in the Sky! :)
Moushy...
This post.. is unique to my eyes.. it actually brought tears to me.. while I could reminisce and relate with your friend’s layover..”Scared of my own thoughts”.. a feeling so hard to accept…
I’ve always been a diary person.. something people would make fun of some of the time, thinking the solely use of it was to talk about boys, girls or friends or etc…
But what about when your diary is about YOU.. what you feel and experience.. how scary is it, when you start avoiding it, avoiding your owns thoughts to avoid your OWN writings! Can one be this scared of himself? Can one really want to live in this denial? And for how long can one last before.. it explodes…
What was even harder to experience was that when I actually assumed writing.. I started writing “Diplomatically” just like how we lead our life most of the time at work..” just be diplomatic to others”
And it suddenly hit me! my writings had also become the source of not only self judgment but the “ what if it this black book, or actually brown to me hehe” would fall into the wrong hands! Where would that take me… ?
So yes Moushy, I can say for myself that the answer to “Are we afraid of what we might actually think if we leave ourselves alone in the silence” quoted from http://mayalisasmile.blogspot.com/, is a pure simple YES… to me at least and I’m sure to million others…not only do we try to live to expectations of others? To how they judge us? But life has made us afraid of our own self judgment.. which is sadly unacceptable…
we have to start accepting ourselves with our flaws but also our experiences that came along the way, to find inner peace.. and carry on this beautiful journey called life :)
Maya.. thank you...so much
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