Silence

In this age of constant earput, I-Pods, TV, satellite radio, video babble, and every other imaginable entertainment possibility, we no longer experience silence. We go through each and every day constantly inundated with preprogrammed puss jammed into our heads through our aural membranes, a constant flow of noise designed to keep our brains busy and our heads empty.

We have become afraid of silence, as though it is the silent enemy, waiting in the wings to make us crazy by simply being exposed to it for any length of time. We take more action to avoid silence than we take to remain clean and sanitary. We just can’t seem to tolerate quiet.

Radio in the car, TV in the bedroom, TV in the refrigerator door, TV in the living room, noise in every room and no one even thinks to turn it off. Hell, we get pissed if someone turns it off! We shout from across the house, “I was watching that”, and actually think we were.

We even resort to talking to ourselves. I don’t know about you, but I know that I am not that entertaining that I really want to listen to myself. (I already know what I am thinking.) We talk to ourselves because it beats the alternative: silence. When it becomes too quiet, we find ourselves muttering our thoughts to fill up that void, filling that empty space between our ears with meaningless gibberish and babble.

We mutter and fill up the vacuum with sound because we are afraid to begin thinking. If we think, we might actually think of SOMETHING, and we can’t have that, now, can we? There is the slight chance an epiphany might happen, then we might have to share it with other people, and we might change a little bit of our world for the better.

Silence is the leading cause of mental illness. If we think too much, we can convince ourselves of anything. If we have nothing better to do, we can believe that the Government is watching our every move and planning on how to introduce us to the Aliens from outer space that are holding Elvis’s brain hostage.