Peace & Quiet

He who does not know how to be silent will not know how to speak. Ausonius

I have been discovering the loudness of my mind.
At every moment, filling every space and every thought; consumed by it, driven by it - the relentless, dirty hum inside my own head.
It is incestuous; so much so that I am mostly unaware of myself. A perpetual state of distraction keeps me from ever touching the passing moment.
My ears are filled with the inaudible whine of televisions and radios and the voices of misguided direction. On my way anywhere. My eyes are blurry from the colors on the covers of beauty magazines and spiritual guidebooks - their words toxic to my soul. My mouth is distracted by the tastes of animals I did not kill. Conveniently boneless. The motion inside my brain - clouded with the concern of fading achievement: my possessions, my turn, my ego.
I can move in any way I wish.
I can speak about all that I know.
I can consider anything.
Yet, there is only the pounding of existence, nothing more.

It is somewhat alluring to be distracted. When I am distracted, I don't have to ask questions. I fear the discoveries and I fear the possibilities of exploring my own being. What if my depths outweigh answers? What if my ideas are uncomfortable or threatening to my safe, caged existence? What if I have to give up the life I live, because I no longer see its value or worth? What if? Is truth worth more to me than a preoccupation? Am I willing to give up everything I have worked for? Am I willing to entirely change course?
If you are as shallow as your own existence allows, why dig deeper when you can be quite satisfied by the bright and shiny simplicity of noise? It is a cycle that drags you deeper and deeper. The more distracted become, the more I am caught up in the clanging sounds that saturate my thoughts; the less I hunger for truth, wisdom and substance. The faint whisper of a dying voice, is all that is left to call me back to my own words.



There is a desperation for silence. A desperation to actually, for once, hear the voice buried inside - to hear myself think for a moment. If for ten minutes, there were only those ten minutes, what would you think about? There is a desperation for breathe. I am suffocating from this loudness. So much distraction that I forget to fill my lungs with air sometimes.
I have been lost in a sea of noise, that wishes to swallow me completely.

Peace & quiet. They are not separate. Quiet the soul, quiet the mind, quiet the fears and the doubt - and peace follows. Instead of running from one distraction to the next, relying on the noise to drown out my own imagination, I want to sit still for awhile. What else do I have to do? Where do I have to be? What is most pressing? Its always a challenge to let comforting lies die.
I don't want to be distracted anymore.
I don't want to be forgotten in my own thoughtless ambition.
I want to feel. I want to think. I want to ask. I want to know.
Peace is quiet. The stillness of truth, the serenity of freedom.





(Andrew Tipton)