Meditations On a Quiet Life

My lifestyle invites silence. Here is what the quiet has told me.

Most days begin the same. It’s almost strange if they don’t. Usually around seven in the morning, just early enough to beat the sun but late enough to satisfy my impatience of waiting for the day to begin, the alarm blares its familiar, excruciating tune. That’s about as loud as it gets at this hour. A comfortingly soft blue sky, air so crisp it cools your insides on every breath, an ever present grasshopper keeping the silence at bay; that’s my waking hour. The remainder of the day is similarly quaint. 

I don’t often rush, except for the mornings, where I chat with the sun as it wakes on a morning jog. I return feeling refreshed, basking in the now glowing beams that slice through the frigid air. I’m calm, and I make my daily latte while reading before class. Some days it's the New Yorker’s latest. Others, it’s my current fiction fixation. Never is it boring, and not a peep is heard. I can hear every page crinkle beneath my fingers. My goal is to one day hone in on my own gears churning.

The reading takes place in my hole, as well as my home. My room is an extension of myself at this point. I keep the lighting warm, I find the use of ambient light mellows the strain of the harshly bright walls compared to the overhead. My bed remains still, untouched except morning or night, where only I occupy the human sized invitation for comfort. I could share it if I wanted. 

I do my best work listening to ambience while at my desk. Ironic, as I tend to keep things quiet.  My rarely interrupted commute from home to class and back again is never blocked by earbuds. Neither is the walk down vacant halls to my lecture. I hear my footsteps echo. Sometimes I wonder if someone’s following me. 

Along with homework, I also conduct my life at my desk. A little add on I forgot to mention, the entirety of my being existing in a cheap PC shell and in the keypads beneath my fingers. I would work at the library, but they don’t have computers with After Effects. Or a mechanical keyboard to make typing more enjoyable. And so I’m coddled in my compartment of comfort, almost not recognizing the daylight fade as I work in silence. Few words are spoken. I forget the sound of my own voice.

While my vocal cords rest, my mind exhausts itself. I find a lack of noise to motivate cognitive thought. I enjoy my commute not because I distract myself from the sights with music clogging my brain, or a Youtube video severing any potential neural connections, but because I’m listening. I’m thinking. I know, impressive. Nowadays, airpods are included in medical textbooks, but I opt for amputation. I like how quiet it can be, and how the world is never really silent. When you only listen to what you choose, the world seems impossibly quiet and infinitely dull.

Most days end the same. It’s almost strange if they don’t. They must, I can’t miss what wisdom the sun has in store for me the next morning. The end of the day may be my favorite, probably because I’m transported back to the quiet tranquility of the early hours. Familiar darkness. Cloaking quiet. A malaise accompanies me into the surreal hours of the night where finally, nothing matters. The mid-afternoon sun is a different persona than the early morning. It’s abrasive, demanding even. There is not an option but to work under its strict control, and I have no choice but to adhere. At night, however, the authority is gone, the comfort returns, and I am quiet once again.

And again.

And again.

And then I wake up to that same alarm, the same blare, and I look out of that same window. The one that feels equally like a tease than a promise to the outside. I wonder if I like it quiet, or if I’m too afraid of a life that isn’t. I don’t like forgetting my own voice. It makes me feel inhuman. 

And such is the quiet life. Always enjoying the quaint, pestered by the interrupted, and later reconsidering if that noise was welcome. Background features are rendered visible in the foreground, when given the attention they deserve. In the same way I miss the world around me when plugged into continuous stimuli, the hypnotic lull of quiet can be ensnaring. I live comfortably, but I don’t want to be stuck in conforming to my own pressure to live comfortably. I’m terrified of the sound of invitation, the commotion of a night out, the hubbub of a long conversation. I get excited by things that scare me. 

My meditations conclude then with a promise. I will remain quiet. I will make my lattes in silence. I will live in the spellbinding gloom. I will also listen. I will remain open to the surrounding sounds, because not all noise is white, and I sometimes crave a good tune. Whether that be in the form of a movie theater’s loudspeakers, a friend’s voice, or simply a new ambience video while I work in peace. I live a quiet life, but I don’t want to exist in perpetual silence.