Did you know that most of us are progressively having fewer and fewer moments when we are not in the midst of a kind of sensory bombardment? You know, sounds coming at you from everywhere, spaces more and more filled with advertisements, posters, and news.

Did you know that most of us are progressively having fewer and fewer moments when we are not in the midst of a kind of sensory bombardment? You know, sounds coming at you from everywhere, spaces more and more filled with advertisements, posters, and news.

We are losing silence, those moments when there is an absence of any sound; real quiet. Many people would say, “So what? What does it matter that I am being blasted with sound from a television screen as I pump my gas and at the checkout line at the grocery store? Or, as I am waiting for the credit card machine to process my purchase I am again flooded with commercials?” Business has become very adept at filling every moment with sound, and every space with pictures and words. It seems that there is an absence of what we might think of as “blank space”or quiet.

In losing our silence we are losing our ability to think and our capacity to be creative. How does this happen? The mind fills in empty or blank spaces. It does this with a variety of things; it may pick up on a random thought, a memory, or a chance-meeting with a person who reminds us of somebody or something. We think, we imagine, we fantasize. Without earbuds in, we hear the world around us. If we are in an airport, we see, we hear people. We have chance encounters, random conversations, and often, the mind is stimulated to create or imagine a variety of things. That’s right; a mind that is confronted with silence fills in the gaps. It may be that we have a conversation that we otherwise wouldn’t have had. Or we have a surprising thought about an issue that has been bothering us at the office. Or an idea that leads to a new product or service.

When we don’t have silence our mind ends up processing all of the sights and sounds that surround us. There isn’t room for thinking. There isn’t room for creativity. There isn’t room to relate and grow.