The myth of silence

Sitting alone in my house I think I hear it.

Silence, the void of sound, reaching my ears

But the stiller and quieter I sit, the more I hear,

Humming and buzzing and ticking and creaking,

The more I try to hear nothing, the more it clogs up my mind.

Silence does not make anyone fearful, only the sounds we hear in the silence do.

Walking alone in the woods on a silent night is not frightening until a howl is heard,

Or the breaking of a twig not far off in the distance.

Has anyone ever heard true silence?

Sitting alone in my home I can hear this house talking to me,

The clock on the wall ticks to remind me how long I’ve been trying to listen to the silence. Moving outside I hear the modern world always, a car, a train, a plane,

This world today prevents silence.

I hear the whirring of cars on the freeway behind my house,

Whizzing past over and over again, never ending.

Even before the noise of technology was a constant though, nature prevented silence.

For as quiet as nature can be, rarely does the wind not whistle or a bird not hum,

Or a critter not scurry about in the woods, creating noise out of what seems like nothing.

I usually do not yearn for silence, but when trying to clear one’s head, silence seems like the key.

For it seems the more silent it is, the more my mind can turn it’s gears.

So I look for it when I need to think, but sometimes it makes me think too much about things I wish were forgotten.

Then I must focus on the noise, to forget these things.

Focus on the humming of the world, the ticking of the clock, the revving of the engines, the busy bees buzzing.

So I search for the balance of order and chaos, hoping that I can finish eating my breakfast alone in the empty house.

Unsure what vibration of the world to tune into to stop myself from overthinking.