Avoiding questions

We often romanticize the quiet.

We take holidays away from noisy cities and plug in earphones to cut out the noise in our surroundings. It creates a sense of focus-the quiet.

We seek quietude through meditation and exercise. Sleeping well is one of the other ways we get a sense of quiet.

But I often feel we avoid the quiet if it doesn't serve a purpose. For instance, a room with closed doors, windows, and little to no noise from the outside would be considered spooky or creepy.

We try to fill it with activity or noise. Our vigilance, like a firefighter, attempts to hose off all stillness that exists. We feel challenged when we have nothing to counter what the quiet offers.

Perhaps we appreciate the quiet only when we make efforts to get there.

My guess is that the quiet is an invisible reflection of oneself. And we are unaware of what to do about ourselves.

So the encounter between ourselves and the reflection is a bit too heady to handle. So we shut out the quiet. Repress it rather before we lose control.

I say repress because our lived self takes all the chances to avoid questions or doubts that the invisible reflection asks. When I think of this avoidance, that teacher who didn't know her subject too well or didn't allow questions in class comes to mind.

But maybe avoidance also helps us be functional? It may not be possible to attend to what our mind throws up at all times.

Other than not knowing what to do about ourselves, we could be fearful. We could fear that the encounter will expose something we know all along. Or we fear the nudge to take action.

And maybe romanticising the quiet helps us take a peek.