Seeking Simplicity? Find Silence.

I’m not sure I can tell you where to find true silence. Do you know?

While we can find ways to obtain solitude that allow us a chance to process our progress, finding silence is trickier. Most of us have to settle for pleasant sounds that don’t distract us very much instead of true silence.

At this rate, my current series about “Seeking Simplicity” will take years. This series began with a post called Seeking Simplicity? Seek Solitude on October 2, 2012. Now, I have the next post in the series for you. It’s about time, don’t you think?

And by the way, this is not a rerun! The last post was about solitude, not silence — two very different things.

Perhaps seeking silence is more about the journey than the destination. And perhaps its more about mental peacefulness that a physical lack of sound coming into your ears.

If you know a place where there’s no sound to distract your brain from its simplest state, I hope you experience it frequently. The rest of us must seek out only mental quietness so we can enjoy the fruits of the simple life.

Silence Is A Lack Of Distraction

Many of us seek the simple life to eliminate distractions and help us reach the place deep within us where nothing hurts, no one is damaged and nonsense doesn’t matter. But with life’s players bustling around us and so few people concerned with inner peace, there’s always a distracting din of conversation, mindless chatter and useless noise to keep us from experiencing our lives fully.

Even when we miraculously find a quiet place to step away from it all for a few moments, our brains often won’t cooperate. Those “little grey cells” (with acknowledgment to Agatha Christie) keep creating, keep worrying and keep sending us impulses to do something, go somewhere or turn our attention to a specific topic.

Even when our world goes quiet for a moment, our minds won’t. So what can we do?

You Must Make A Choice

Most bloggers who write about simple, minimalist living suggest meditation to find and take advantage of silence. That’s something I try to do for at least a few minutes every day. But if you can’t or won’t do that, it’s not something you can be convinced to do by an article.

Instead, you’re left with a life from which you can’t possibly benefit — unless you can learn meditation or an alternative. Simplicity does no good when we can’t quiet our minds enough to contemplate its effects and consider what we’ve gained. To do that, we need solitude, silence and a few more things we’ll talk about in future posts, once I get around to them.

Are you willing to do what it takes to help your simple life soak into your core? Or do you prefer things as they are out there in the rest of the world — where people chatter incessantly, seek but never find and hope but do nothing to help themselves?

I choose to find some silence in my life and in my mind. Do you?

Gip Plaster

Gip Plaster is a web content writer. Previously a journalist, online bookseller and even a corporate advertising guy, Gip now specialize in writing high-quality content for websites — his and other people’s. Learn more here.