It used to be, that time spent in a doctor’s waiting room, a coffee shop or a car wash lounge was time for reflection, for watching people, connecting with the environment or leafing through a year old magazine. Now every spare minute is spent answering text messages, reading trivia, forming words, listening to music or watching clips on YouTube. No time to think. We have to let other people do our thinking for us. We can watch them, listen to them, learn from them, but we have no time to muse for ourselves. We have time for knowledge, but no time for wisdom. Herman Hesse believed that knowledge is communicable, but wisdom is not. In order to acquire wisdom one has to have time to ponder, and use one ’s knowledge to come to realizations. With the onslaught of aural and visual stimuli we not only do not have time to reflect, we do not have time to do what the mind needs most to stay healthy: experience silence.
Vahe, djagaden zarguir noren! I’m guilty of the same…It’s like I’m on a rollercoaster that doesn’t stop and as sick as it makes me, I don’t want to give up the thrill. Having said that, I truly miss the times when people actually talked to one another and built friendships. The good old days when we knew if our loved ones were happy or sad by the tone of their voices and not by their posts on FB. Ays inch ashkhar esdeghzetsink??? Tayib, I’m gonna be quiet now…klookhes baytaz eh aysor!
Hello Vahe,
I was trying to concentrate on practicing piano since morning and my computer kept distracting me as it is right next to my piano and once in a while I was stopping to check my messages, in a way justifying it as taking a break (yea right:))…at one point I realised (this is before reading your post) that I wasn’t feeling good, so I lied down on the sofa and closed my eyes for about half an hour. It made me feel a bit better. Silence made me feel better. After a while though, I checked my mails again but this time it was worth it:) I saw your note which was communicating a message to me as if it was written for me. Thank you Vahe. Missing you here in Australia!
Much love,
Zela
Great post. Lots to think about. In this world, technology is my necessity and I have found that in order to maintain good mental health silence is an effort. Silence through meditation as well as urban mindfulness. Finding the simple pleasures in things like you said sitting at a car wash and absorbing your environment and connecting with everything and everyone around you. Like riding a bicycle or playing the piano, mindfulness requires practice and effort. Washing the dishes can be a meditation of its own. But with it, you can start reprogramming your mind and living a more fulfilling life in the middle of this techno urban jungle. You can’t help but have as you call it “self inflicted ADD”
As for the painting, I recently find myself in the same boat and have found the right music can carry you through all the distractions and with each beat playing in the background it can be the pulse to the strokes you paint. Viva la music. ?
MT
Yes you make us think. We are suppose to be of hollow head and fat body. Let the world fly by with nonsense information fed to us – like it or not. Social media that swallows our creativity and leaves us no time to reflect nor look ahead, except for the next econtact.
Amen to that. The irony is that I’m reading this on one of those very self-inflicted attention deficit binges.
I am agreeing with the analysis that Facebook, social media, and the mobile is not helping us to be creative and calm down and be secluded from everything and concentrate on one thing and be laser-focused. And this coming from a savvy user, who works in the field of computers, websites and apps.
I know that several people are leaving Facebook and social media, since they’ve come to the conclusion that it is taking much of their time and face-to-face interaction and book reading. Only a few are saying “good-bye” before their departure from Facebook.
loved this! so well spoken. someone somewhere once said: “you are ruled by everything until you understand the power of doing nothing” i.e. experiencing silence as you say….
This makes me sad because it’s so true! Vahe jan, this is something I’ve been pondering upon for a long time now myself…and the reason why technology doesn’t excite me much anymore. “Experience silence”….you couldn’t have said it better.
Well said, my friend. And it’s perhaps the reason I just want to spend more and more time in the garden.
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, Vahe. I needed to read this…
So true! Reminded me of this great NY Times piece about a trip involving neuroscientists getting away from the city and seeing how it affects their capacity to focus and mental fragmentation when they get away from the city, email, and technology: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/technology/16brain.html
There has also been a lot of articles lately about how important down time is to let our brains organize all of the experiences we’ve had, which in turn affects our abilities to be creative and come up with interesting solutions to difficult problems.
Great post Vahe!
Sosae Caetano — seeing red
Silence and sereny are possible with standard meditation techniques. However, there are other meditations that offer peace of mind and creativity. There is noise, there is silence, then there is poetry and music. For a complete course in creative medtiataion, visit: story-yoga.blogspot.com
And one more thing, don’t type in the dark. Excuse the typos.