Quiet: all it’s cracked up to be?

People long for peace and quiet.

I’m not so sure they do.

The phrase “peace and quiet” gives off a good vibe, suggesting a relaxing comfort, a place or period without stress or chaos…so when people ache so for peace and quiet, I think they’re really asking for peace.

Quiet is quite scary.

It’s also hard to come by. Maybe that’s what makes it seem like something precious. In this busy world, there’s always something making noise. In industrialized places, noise suggests this frantic workaday world, the mechanical drive that pushes us. “Get away from all the noise,” we say, when we wish for solace (again, actually peace).

There’s clinical quiet that’s not so quaint: being even temporarily deafened is unsettling. Even having my hearing damaged (tractors, rock concerts, explosions…) makes me uneasy.

Beyond this, however, there’s a quiet that can be very unsettling, the stillness of one’s home.

Some people live alone, and they may find this harder to relate to, but those of us who have had a houseful of family, pets, friends, etc. get it. When the television is off and the jokes and yelling are quelled and the chairs aren’t being pulled in/out…when there’s no one around to make any noise…there’s still noise.

Some busy households are only this calm at night. I live in such a place, and I am a creature of the night. I roam all around our home in the dark, sitting sometimes for hours in the blackened peace…but it’s still not really quiet.

I hear clocks ticking. I hear air handlers, fans and appliances cycling. I hear the wind pushing my house around, and I hear my house creaking and popping in response.

There are places in this house where it approaches quiet, where even the pipes make no noise. Here, however, I can hear myself. My pulse, my breathing, and if it’s really, really approaching quiet, my eyelids, my jawbone, my joints.

Quiet rooms, anechoic chambers, are carefully engineered places to test things (including our reactions to silence). I would love to experience one, for I think I’m attuned to it. While most people cannot tolerate this level of quiet more than half an hour, especially in the dark, I think I could stick it out. Apparently it’s so unnerving that true quiet causes panic.

Sedatephobia is the fear of silence. It is real.

Fear the silence.