When I was a child I wondered whether my head could fill up to the point where nothing more could fit in. Would something have to make way for the new stuff or could I keep cramming more and more into my brain indefinitely? Undoubtedly I would forget things but were they lost, never to be found again?
When I became an adult, experience answered that question. Experience born from trauma. Some memories stay stuck forever. It’s usually the bad ones that hang around, the ones that strip confidence and haunt dreams. I’d hoped that I’d buried mine so deep that they would never resurface but these are the things that enter by way of silence.
I tried my utmost to banish these thoughts by blocking their way with endless Talk Radio. If I listened hard to dull conversation I could sleep without worry but if I didn’t engage my brain my brain would engage me and sleep would be fitful at best.
My preoccupation with worrisome recalls was such that peace could elude me even in daylight. They bled inside of me, cursing me, causing me to regret and feel pangs of guilt. The very essence of me ebbed away.
But older now, I am once again reconciled with my thoughts and I have learnt to welcome and embrace the silence. To regard it as friend, not foe. In his seminal work Anam Cara, John O’Donoghue wrote:
“It is not doing the stressful things that creates stress but allowing hardly any time for silence so that our minds can recharge. If we live an extroverted life with no time to ourselves, we always pay a price. The voice inside us that brings wisdom rarely shouts…. I’m reminded of Pascal’s famous remark that most of our problems come from not being able to sit in a room and be still.”
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