Sound of Silence

30 weeks left
23 weeks completed
4 weeks left until mid-tour leave…ONE MONTH until I see J…no words.
1 Pounds lost
26 pounds total
13 months until the wedding

While I’m not interested in (carbon) dating myself here, I will admit that I was born basically in between generations. I’m not a Baby Boomer. I’m not a Generation Y-er .I’m not a flower child or a hippie. I’m neither the Young Urban Professional nor the Young Upwardly-Mobile Professional that would make me a Yuppie of the 1980’s. People who spend their time classifying such things would put me at the very very very earliest date of the Generation X-ers, though in practical conversation, no one would ever describe me as such.

I sort of think of myself as a tweener. I grew up with four television channels that came from an antenna on the roof, and we really didn’t watch it very much (the tv, not the antenna.) My high school got it’s very fist EVER computer (ah, the old Green-screened Apples) when I was a senior. I went jogging with a walkman that played cassettes and had big bright orange foam headphones that rested on the outside of the ear...and that’s when I wasn’t inside playing my records.

I’m not going to go on and on about how old I am (because come on, that’s no fun really- and if you really want to go down that path, I’m certain you can find yourself one of those mass emails entitled “You know you’re a child of the 70’s/80’s if…” to relish and relive the glory days.) Besides I don’t feel like an old lady. And additionally, I’m in that fantastic age bracket where I probably cannot refer to myself seriously as “young” anymore, but I’m also not so old that I’m tragically unhip to my students (which is awesome, because I can bring up things like Jersey Shore with them and they both dig that I know what that is and are slightly embarrassed for me when I try to talk about it. I’m in the “embarrassing the kids” bracket. LOVE it.)

But I have to say, as a teacher, I am actively aware of the way that students are changing. The way they learn…the way they process information…the way they listen. They are most decidedly the children of technology. They must have their cell phones. And their ipods. And their texting. And their non-stop stimulus. And I used to get angry and think that it was simply lack of manners or concentration that was keeping them tethered to all this extra outside stimuli.

But the truth is (and I’ve read some really interesting research about this) kids who have grown up always having 100 channels of television, and portable music and access to the internet with instantly available unlimited information are actually, chemically, physiologically wired differently in the brain than the generations before. It’s not that they just want all this crazy tech stuff. It’s that they need it. (True story, when I told my students they couldn’t have phones in the room during a test once, one student, with a very serious and concerned face asked “But then how I will know what time it is?” When I pointed to the wall clock and offered to take my watch off for him to use instead of the phone’s digital display, he stared back at me, expressionless, saying nothing. I realized that he couldn’t tell time from an actual clock-with-hands.)

Now I will openly admit, that being a self-proclaimed tweener, and a musician, and having a titch of the ol’ ADD myself, I like when there are things going on around me. I don’t always need texting and computing and phoning and interneting. But I do need noise. If I have to really really focus to write something scholarly, I’m probably sitting in a busy public place, ingesting caffeine like it’s my job, while paying attention to everyone around me and listening to heavy metal or loud alternative music in my headphones. Somehow, when all that other “noise” is happening, that’s when my mind clears, and I can tackle the task at hand. I’m not sure if that’s how it works for this new Generation Next, but that’s how it works for me. (In a related story, Seether, Breaking Benjamin and Linkin Park are primarily responsible for my completed dissertation.)

It’s hard for me to be in my house without having the TV on. I’m probably not actually watching it, but I need the white noise. It is virtually impossible for me to exercise without headphones (I mean, serious exercising. I can take a lap around the parking lot to smell the flowers, but if I’m walking/ jogging/ running for cardio, no way I can do it without tunes.) And it is a rare day when I can drive in my car without music to sing along to, or NPR, or a book on CD.

Today, however, was that rare day.

I was making a bit of a tenuous drive, through some bad weather on a busy interstate, through some pretty curvy hilly roads. The radio wasn’t coming in so well (ah, dated myself again…or perhaps I’ve just dated my vehicle. No satellite radio for me. I rely on the old school antenna kind.) And so, for what had to be the first time in forever, as I was trying to concentrate on the drive, instead of turning up the white noise, I turned off the music. Silence. Just me, the hum of the engine and the pounding of the rain on the hood of my car for three whole hours. Deafeningly still, and surprisingly beautiful.

As the rain let up, I reached down to turn the radio back on, and then decided against it. Silence. It struck me that the reason it felt so completely thick and foreign was because silence in today’s world is an endangered species. It’s like Darwin has said, “Nope, noise wins. We need stimuli from the outside to keep this new generation going. Sorry silence, you’re the weakest link. Goodbye.”

I would ask you this: When’s the last time you took time to sit in complete silence? To revel in being able to hear your own heartbeat…or a cricket outside chirp…or a wall clock tick (does anyone still have wall clocks? I have three in my house.) It was almost a meditative state I was in today for the three hours I drove in perfect silence. My thoughts were not cluttered. My heart was light. I spent time marveling at the spectacle that was the cloud formations moving and growing and changing colors in the setting sun.

There’s a reason the phrase is “peace and quiet.” In the quiet tonight, I found some much needed peace.

Of course, as always, I had song lyrics floating in and out of my head during this time of reflection. Simon and Garfunkel (who quite honestly make the best traveling companions one could ever ask for in pretty much any situation) repeating this simple lyric: “People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening…” Truer words could not have been spoken to me in that moment (though totally out of the context of the song…but we’ll let that one slide for now.)

I wonder if this generation or the generations to come will appreciate the sound of silence, the moments of quiet clarity that come from turning everything else in the world off for just a minute. I think that I had forgotten the power of silence in my life. But I’m thankful that I had this time to reconnect with nothingness. As I watched the incredible sunset that always comes after a major storm, Crayola Brick Red and Atomic Tangerine and Burnt Sienna and Violent Violet smeared across the sky in front of the setting globe of fire behind it, I had to smile. In this particular instance, silence was quite literally, golden.