It’s been forever since I’ve sat in real silence.  My mind is always going so that in itself is never quiet, and I have too many anxieties about what others are thinking/feeling to ever just sit with someone and not talk.  It’s too quiet and my mind tells me stories about what’s going on in the other person’s head and it WILL tell me I’m doing something wrong, that I’m wrong somehow, that I need to make that person feel comfortable.  Make them tell me everything, make them validate me.  Quiet and silence felt violent, even unbearable, because even in silence, my mind finds ways to wander, to tell me the things I don’t want to hear, the things I fear, the things I’ve done, the things I may or may not do.  The things I’ve avoided about myself because I’m afraid they’re true.  We all have those dark parts of us we have to wrestle with and I hid mine because I didn’t want that to define who I am.  When it’s too silent, my mind decides that for me and I’m afraid I know exactly who I am–and that person isn’t very likeable, that maybe I really am the sum of the worst of myself.  The only thing violent about the silence is myself. 

I seek the peace that comes with silence.  Silence is supposed to be peaceful, to settle us.  I’ve too often let it unnerve me to the point of creating the scenario I feared in the first place—I made the fears come true.  I think of the times when I’ve felt the most settled, the most peaceful and it’s always been surrounded by nature, with my family, or with a real revelation from my work or even my reading.  The sensation that comes over my body can’t be described as anything other than “right.”  There’s no need, no desire to be anywhere else.  No need to  rush or do anything else. The peace of knowing all is well no matter what, that we have done enough, we are enough.  Whenever those moments arise, I try to ride with them as long as I can because it feels good. It make sense and I’m somehow able to let go of the idea that I have to live or do things a certain way at all.  It’s the flow. But there are times when sitting, either alone or with someone, where I can’t bear to let that happen.  There is something in my mind about not knowing what’s going on in that other person’s head that drives me crazy.

So I guess like anything else, it’s practice.  We have to practice getting comfortable with ourselves, with the truth of who we are.  Like I said, we all have parts of ourselves we aren’t proud of—we all disappoint ourselves at times.  We don’t need to torture ourselves with them.  We can learn to accept them.  I’m not advocating for punishing ourselves over and over again for the parts of ourselves that didn’t quite live up to what we expected.  I’m also not saying to wear them as a badge of honor.  There is a middle ground where we can learn from what we’ve done and move on.  If we want the silence to be our friend, to tell us the truth, we need to learn to accept all those parts.  No one will ever be as cruel to ourselves as we are.  And the truth is we are the only person who will be with us from the very beginning to the very end.  Why not make that a loving partnership?  Or at least an understanding one?  I speak from the experience of carrying the weight of other people’s expectations on me, of not feeling like enough.  Let the silence guide us to the best parts of ourselves.