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Noise certainly seems to be
part of our everyday lives from the alarm clock in the morning,
to the traffic outside, to the never-ending sound of voices,
radio, and television.Our bodies and minds appear to acclimate
to these outside intrusions. Or do they?
Two decades ago the
committee on Environmental Quality of the Federal Council for
Science and Technology found that “growing numbers of
researchers fear the dangerous and hazardous effects of intense
noise on human health are seriously underestimated.”
Similarly, the late Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, when
writing about the environmental crisis of our time, noted that
when people are fully aware of the damage noise can inflict on
man, “peace and quite will surely rank along with clean skies
and pure waters as top priorities for our generation”
More recent studies, writes
Michael D. Seidman, M.D., in terrific book, Save Your Hearing
Now, suggest that we pay a price for adapting to noise: higher
blood pressure, heart rate, and adrenaline secretion; heightened
aggression; impaired resistance to disease; a sense of
helplessness. Studies indicate that when we can control noise,
its effects are much less damaging. I haven’t been able to
find any studies on the effects of quite in repairing the stress
of noise, but I know intuitively that most of us love quite and
need it desperately. We are so used to noise in our lives that
silence can sometimes feel awkward and unsettling. On vacation,
for instance, when quite prevails, we may have trouble sleeping.
But choosing times of silence can enrich the quality of our
lives tremendously. If you find yourself overworked,
stressed-out, irritated, or tense, rather than heading for a
coffee or snack break, maybe all you need is a silence break.
Everyone at some time has experienced the feeling of being
overwhelmed by life. Everyone, too, has felt the need to escape,
to find a quite, secluded place to experience the peace of
spirit, to be alone with quite thoughts. Creating times of
silence in your life takes commitment and discipline. Most of
the time, periods of silence must be scheduled into your day’s
activities or you’ll never have any.
Maybe you can carve out
times of silence while at home where you can be without radio,
television, telephone, or voices. If you live in a family, maybe
the best quite time for you is early in the morning before other
arise. In that silence, you can become more aware, more
sensitive to your surroundings, feel more in touch with the
wholeness of life.
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