We no longer know what it’s like to be silent. In fact, we’re afraid of it. We often fall asleep in front of a television set and wake up when someone switches it off.  We like the cacophony of voices, beeps and music. There’s too much information out there and acquiring it keeps us busy. We diagnose psychological disorders through reels made by mental health experts, get medical advice from physicians who haven’t inspected our physiques, pass on financial advice (without taking it) from random investment bankers, make mental notes of tips from dermatologists and so on. The advice may be somewhat useful, but you know what they say about free advice.

We’re happy to fill the silence with something, anything. It isn’t surprising then that the voice in my head doesn’t process my thoughts. It has grown dependent on various sources and rendered me incapable of making a decision through quiet contemplation. I seek validation for an outfit from a WhatsApp group chat, grow panicky about a medication I’ve been prescribed (after reading the side-effects online) and often find myself saying things like, “It’s chaotic out there,” and “Who can tell?” Despite understanding the downside of overthinking, no one seems to be putting an end to it. From the moment we start our day, we’re being told how to breathe, what to eat, which exercises to perform, which schedule to follow and the number of glasses of water we need to drink. Somewhere, between my sixth and eight glass of water, I feel something like ‘water-drinking’ fatigue. Whatever happened to the time when we drank water only if we were thirsty, when we threw mud on a scraped knee but the wound healed and when we trusted our instincts about a person without checking them out on social media.

Even in matters of religion and spirituality, widely circulated theories have forced silent repose to take a backseat. We are told to think about images of objects we desire because thoughts are powerful, as though we can think up success or good health. Alternately, the internet is flooded with guided meditation audios because sitting still by oneself has become impossible. Many of us are unable to pray in solitude, so we congregate and chant. Others have come up with mental exercises, proclaiming that it is beneficial to write down and burn fearful thoughts, to chronicle a daily routine before turning in at night and to maintain a gratitude journal. All of it keeps us occupied, adding to the stress of not doing enough to de-stress. Whereas what we really need is to be free of it. It’s only natural to be overwhelmed, mistakes and misery included. Some problems have to be cried over, some desires will remain unrealized and the few kilos of weight on your belly or thigh or arms or whatever will never melt no matter how many chia seed oatmeal breakfasts you eat.

It’s when we are constantly being told what to do that we begin to feel unsure. Our inner voice grows faint, shaky. We become nostalgic about our childhood because it takes us back to a time when we were unencumbered by social structure. We cry over songs that we heard in our youth because our hearts had not yet grown weary. Marriages or relationships fail because it can change the person inside us. We submerge qualities to please someone and create a different persona; a compromise we keep up until we are disappointed. Some of us attempt to rediscover ourselves through a new person so that we can retrace the steps to our former self. We aren’t always looking for love and excitement. More often than not, we are looking for our lost self.

We try to find ourselves through conversations, through books, through cinema and through experiences. Anything except silence. We walk around with headphones, glued to a laptop or a mobile phone. The few minutes of forced meditation or prayer isn’t enough to declutter the load we have been carrying for years. No matter how many journals we fill with our stream of consciousness, they only help us to release our thoughts, not to stem them altogether.  We can send wishes, thoughts, prayers and questions out into the universe but the only response we are sure to receive in return is silence. Hence, silence is a language we need to learn in order to feel a sense of communion with it.