What is silence good for?

In a world dominated by noise, a space of quiet becomes vital. Without noises that prevent you from enjoying the beauty of a place. And from daydreaming.

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Importance of silence

From home to the workplace, from the busy streets of a city to the nightlife in the historic center of a village: wherever we feel the desire to grow silenceAnd even in the most modern solutions for shared workspaces, coworking, people are now looking for furnishings and spatial organization that guarantee the intimacy and concentration that comes with the absence of noise. Long live the silence, therefore, always highly celebrated also in the universe of art and literature.

Importance of silence

I read a short text by the writer Andrea Bajani on silence, and I was struck by the poetic image of strength, of value, of that atmosphere which, simply put, translates first of all into a lack of noise, perhaps the main prosthesis that accompanies the life of contemporary man. Bajani writes: "We should see how man treats the sea to extract its salt, and we should also divide the silence into basins. Extract it from the earth, siphon it from the woods at night, collect it in buckets from the cellars.... We should do as we do with the sea, and after dividing the silence into basins, wait, knowing that the wait will be rewarded." Of course it will be rewarded: Silence gives us back, with enormous interest, many things, starting with health which is instead shaken, and put at risk, by excessive noise.

The meaning of silence

Il silence It can have different meanings. For example, it signals, like a thermometer, a blockage of speech, a lack of desire to speak to the other person (and therefore also a form of aggression), a certain level of anxiety. But this doesn't mean silence can be classified as the opposite of communication; on the contrary, it is. Silence is the antithesis of noise, and it is the prerequisite for speech. Speech requires listening, and for to listen Silence is essential. The French sociologist David Le Breton writes (in the book On Silence. Escaping the Noise of the World, Cortina editions): “There is no word without silence”. And it is a Camaldolese friar who tells in the book Don't waste (Einaudi editions) how silence is the fundamental tool for communicating and connecting with the Divine. As opposed to the waste of words and noise.
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The damages of theexcess noise There can be many, and they affect not only our physical health, but also our mental balance. Deafened, we lose clarity and serenity. Silence, please. We need it like bread: when the noise of the neighbors It deafens us, when we are stopped at a traffic light (with a red light) and the person behind us honks, when we try to concentrate and we can't because something is disturbing our brain. How much we miss it, often, sometimes every day, silenceIt seems to us like an unattainable, fragile and precious object, which we cannot grasp, surrounded as we are by noise. It is the silence (far from useless therapies...) which allows us to relax, at the same time raising our thoughts and giving us moments of harmony with the world.

Benefits

We all need the silenceAn essential commodity, like oxygen to breathe and water to avoid dying of thirst. And yet we waste it in a daily orgy of sounds and noises, some inevitable and others simply the result of bad habits. Deafened by loud noises, think of those unfortunate enough to live in the area just a few meters from the ski slopes.airport of Ciampino, and by great violence, that suffered by citizens surrounded at night by the chaos of metropolitan nightlife. But also overwhelmed by small sounds, those of the simplest gestures and habits, which, added together over the course of an entire day, including night, immerse our lives in a tunnel of daily background noise, where silence disappears. The trill of the cellular, which perhaps wakes you up as soon as you close your eyes on the train, the sound of a horn, at a traffic light, which signals the moment, just a fraction of a second, in which the light has turned green and theautomobilista, or the motorcyclist, behind you have no time to waste.

The silence that needs the solitude, not as isolation and detachment from others but as a need for pure and simple quiet, has a regenerative power that has been confirmed for years by various scientific studies. In short: thanks to silence brain cells regenerate in the hippocampus area new cells develop that can become neurons. Hence the increase in the memory and creativity, and also learning abilities. In this regard, silence is suggested and considered fundamental for the healthy development of a child: it serves precisely, like the boredom, to fuel his creativity.

Excessive and unnecessary noise suffocates our intimacy, our thoughts, as it reduces, think of the overlapping voices on a talk show, an idea, and a project that concern the public sphere. The American Constituents, when they gathered in Independence Hall to write the Constitution of the United States of America, had the streets surrounding the building covered with earth. Even politics, when it thinks—and it must think to be effective—needs silence, not the shouting of a television chicken coop.

The health risks of noise

The first waste linked to the eclipse of silence concerns HealthAccording to statistics from the World Health OrganizationIn 2001, there were half a billion people with hearing problems, and by 2030, this number will double.. The causes?

  • Work.
  • Traffic.
  • Fun.

In practice, the noise that deafens us is no longer just a pollution problem, the acoustic one sometimes neglected compared to the environmental one, but it has transformed into a virus that also overwhelms our free time, the space in the calendar that we dedicate to the sonno, to pleasure, to holidays. To reflection, because thought needs silence and if noise is rampant it is very likely that our thoughts will also be disordered and compulsive sounds. On the other hand, the noise pollution caused by trafficLet's remember this data when we can use the car less in cities, it causes damage to 44 percent of the European Union's population and costs 326 billion euros to the EU's public health system.

The second waste, which we often consume at home, is a loss of serenity, even of existential pleasure if you like. Of an inner peace, which does not necessarily have to pass through a monastero or for one wood, but that we can also conquer turning down the volume of the television or a discussion with the childrenThe philosophy professor at the Bicocca University of Milan, Duccio Demetrio, and the journalist Nicoletta Polla-Mattiot have created the Academy of Silence (www.accademiadelsilenzio.org) which is not a place for intellectual abstractions, but an association that aims to "spread the ecology of silence in living spaces, against useless noise." Demetrio and Polla-Mattiot remind us how useful, I would even say indispensable, silence is for improving language and therefore communication with others, how necessary pauses, low tones, and listening are for good relationships with anyone. And to avoid drowning the joy of living in the devastating chaos of noise for its own sake.

The English word that translates the Italian noise is noise, which derives from the Latin nausea. The etymology It gives a good idea of ​​the annoyance caused by unnecessary noises, very unwelcome in ancient times even to the gods. The main victims of useless noises (think of the excesses of nightlife or the music that bombards the brain (in any bar now) are the elderly and the young people. The former retreat, because they cannot communicate if their voice is covered by useless noises. The latter shatter their eardrums. And while silence relaxes us, naturally increases the level of our thoughts and leads us into a different harmony with the world, the unnecessary noise creates separateness, from everything and everyone, isolation and stress.

Famous quotes about silence

  • "In one kiss, you will know everything that has been kept silent." Pablo Neruda

Silence is discretion, even in love. A veil that helps give greater substance to one's feelings, and even to desire, only to be torn apart by the sweetest gesture: a simple kiss.

 

  • "Before you speak, ask yourself if what you are going to say is true, if it won't cause harm to anyone, if it is useful, and finally if it is worth disturbing the silence for what you want to say." Buddha

So much wisdom condensed into a single sentence! The tendency to talk, so fueled by the power of social media and technology in general, no longer distinguishes truth from falsehood. It doesn't even consider the harm we can do to someone with those words, which are worth stones, or the usefulness of what we're about to say. And it doesn't even encourage us to breathe before opening our mouths to speak.

 

  • "The silence of the envious makes a lot of noise."  Khalil Gibran

The silence of envy is a grim, black silence that pushes people away instead of bringing them together. And we don't need to strain our ears to hear it: it's very loud.

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