Silence

I attended an all-day writers’ workshop in Chapel Hill recently. When we broke for lunch workshop presenter Debra Moffitt planned that we each eat in silence. She stated that most Americans are uneasy in silence. Their houses are filled with music, TV or other sounds that float in the background. It’s true. Most of us are unused to the quiet. Until I moved to North Carolina to write full-time, I usually had music playing in the background, maybe softly but it was there while I worked. I sold music CDs in my bookshop so I always featured a CD, varying the type of music to appeal to different tastes.

Silence filled my house for my first year in the south. It fed my creativity allowing my mind to really think without distracting noises. I live rurally surrounded by forest. Trees are a great filter of noise. I don’t live near an airport or large city so when on rare occasions an airplane flies over I notice it. It took me back to my childhood when we stopped to point out a plane spotted in the sky. Unusual in those days.

So I delighted in taking my lunch and finding a shady spot under a tree in the forest that circles the library. A couple of folks couldn’t do it. They sat on a bench outside and chatted away. Oh, she also told us that reading at lunch doesn’t count. That’s mind noise.