I love Mondays. This was not always the case though. For years I hated them. Hated them so much that I hated Sundays too because Sunday just meant that Monday was coming. When I began working for myself in 1996, I decided that I would take Mondays off. It took me years to change the automatic depression that would settle in me on Sunday and follow me until mid Monday, but I am happy to report that the pattern eventually was eventually broken.
This past Monday was an exceptionally relaxing one for me. After a cup of my homemade chai on the front porch, I worked most of the day in our yard, clipping and trimming up trees, plants, pulling sticky weeds. Around 2ish, I decided it was time for lunch and a little reading time, so I plopped myself down in my $5 rocking chair on the porch to relax. Before I knew it, I was dozing off, Atlas Shrugged laying heavily in my lap, the sound of school busses pulling into the parking lot across the street at the Junior High had a pleasantness to it, like a dull backdrop of a fresh painting, highlighted by the occasional voice of a pre-teen happily released early from the tight grip of school. My mind wandered off into the atmosphere somewhere, light and joyful.
I love this state, you know the one, where you are sort of awake and sort of unconscious? The one where you feel as if you are floating and looking down at yourself? It is so serene. So comforting. So refreshing.
Imagine my surprise when rudely this loud noise flamboyantly smashed into my soft semi-consciousness. The noise was like an atomic bomb going off, or a tornado ripping through my head, or someone yelling directly into my ear with a megaphone.
The sound? What was it? It was silence. And it only lasted for a split second. And it was incredible. It was beautiful. I knew silence existed becaue I have experienced it before, but it has been a very long time as I have tinitus, which is a constant ringing in the ear. Tinitus is a pretty common thing, and the range of sound(s) varies from person to person. My particular ringing is like a very high C or even and A on the musical scale, and is in both ears. It is the sound of train wheels screeching to a halt; of a siren blaring, of a high-pitched bell ringing; constantly. non-stop, 24/7. It gets worse: when the environment around me is quiet, the ringing is louder.
When I first experienced this ringing back in my late teens to early 20's, a co-worker of mine at Malvasio's Grocery, Jan, told me it might be aliens trying to reach me, or spirits, and all I needed to do was to listen to them. Hmmm. Plausible. But unfortunately that didn't work.
It has been at least a decade since I have experienced quiet in my head. The cause of the ringing? Stress. It has been maintained by stress and fed on stress. I have been focusing on releasing the incessant ringing for the past 2 years and I know I will succeed, which is why Monday's loud quietness in my head was so exciting! It proved to me that it has no power over me and it will go away and be replaced by a white canvas on which I can paint my thoughts to on any tune I want to play in my head, including silence. That brief, miniscule moment proved to me that it can be done; that the sound of silence can be attained, if even for a tiny bit of time.
The Sound of Silence . . . I am not afraid of this sound. From silence comes everything. No wonder so many of us are afraid of it. No wonder our ego holds it from us: it perishes in the sound of silence.
I think it may be time to hit the rocking chair with lunch and Ayn Rand again - I hear silence calling my name.
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