Silence and Solitude - Getting to Know Yourself in Peace

I am an extrovert by nature.  What that means is that I enjoy being around people and I am an outgoing person.  It would be difficult to call me shy, although I occasionally tend to be reticent around people I don’t know well, given that I’ve developed some trust issues over the years due to poor family dynamics and poor relationship decisions, one pretty much flowing from the other.  When I entered the convent, the concept of silence of any kind was a difficult one for me.  I love to talk and to be involved in high-spirited conversations.  I love to sing, hum, and do all those things that happy people tend to do.  In many ways, I was a bit like Maria from the Sound of Music – I found myself talking too much, laughing too loud, and singing when I wasn’t supposed to (ACK – the horror!).

My days in the convent were routine as far as a prayer life was concerned.  Each of us arrived in the chapel one hour prior to Morning Prayer for private meditation.  We prayed Morning Prayer (Lauds) aloud and in common, celebrated Mass, and began our regular day with breakfast.  We met again in the late afternoon to pray a Rosary in common, along with Evening Prayer (Vespers); then had supper.  In the afternoon, each of us had a half-hour of adoration time scheduled into our day as well – a time of silent prayer in the chapel.

For me, an hour-and-a-half of silence in one day was unthinkable - excruciating, to be quite honest.  I was easily distracted by every cough.  I glanced at the chapel door every time someone walked past to see what I was missing.  Some mornings all I did for the last fifteen minutes of my “meditation” time was watch Sister Audrey, our sacristan, perform her preparations for the Mass because I simply couldn’t focus on anything else and at least she was moving.  I was one of those people who thought that if you up and awake, you should be moving, working, DOING something.  I thought this especially to be the case if you were up and awake at five in the morning.  And, yes, while I may have been up, I can’t honestly say I was awake.  I have never been a “morning person.”

As I’ve aged, and deepened my spiritual life, I’ve developed a desperate need for solitude and silence on a fairly regular basis.  These last few years, I’ve neglected that need and it has finally taken its toll on my mental and physical health.  It is virtually never silent in my home.  There is always a television on or music playing.  I live in an apartment on a main street in northwest Chicago that is always, and I do mean always busy.  There is a church next door that has activity happening all seven days of the week for the majority of the year and they are (and I am not speaking in hyperbole) the loudest people in the city of Chicago.  We also live about six blocks west of a fire station, so lots of screaming sirens go by us regularly throughout the day and night.

Our lives in the 21^st century are filled with noise.  Cars speeding past, mobile phones jangling, bosses and coworkers demanding attention, commercials shouting at thrice the volume of the program they’re interrupting, and children speeding, jangling, demanding attention, and shouting as well – inside and outside the home for some of you.  Most of us long for a moment of silence throughout the day, but rarely do we actively pursue it.  That has to stop.  Solitude and silence are imperative for the growth and maintenance of the human soul and mind.  For each person, there is a time of the day when they must retreat to a place where they are completely alone and totally silent.

This place may be a place where you encounter the God of your understanding. It may simply be a place where you encounter truths about yourself, your needs, your wants, and your desires that you don’t have time or focus to deal with in the everyday chaos of life. But, whether this encounter is between you and your God or you and yourself, you will come out of it changed for the better. You will be grounded, centered, and whole. There will be clarity of thought about issues that were causing strife before you entered into the quiet and solitude. There may be an insight into something you’ve done or something you’ve said that was confusing to you or may have seemed irrational at the time. A part of you that has been dead will come to life as though you’ve reached the center of yourself and walked through the gate into the area where life begins – your personal Garden of Eden.

There is, within each of us, a spark of creation – a spark that ignites life, as it were. That spark can only be reached when we shut the world off and shut the world out. That spark lights the torch that keeps us alive and burning to change the world around us for the better. We take from this silence and solitude a voice that, while quiet and gentle, can be heard above the chaos of the world and make a change. We need only speak with that voice to help calm the chaos around us in our everyday life and change the craziness into sanity.

For the extroverts among us, solitude can be an experience of horror. We may feel disconnected from the world and become restless in our desperate need to reach out to others. We fear being alone – what happens if this simple period of solitude turns into the desolation of eternal loneliness? This is only possible only if you don’t meet either your God or yourself during this period of solitude. Neither of these possibilities exists. Solitude allows us to look inward in a way that being surrounded by others does not.

Silence allows us to hear what is going on inside our hearts. We listen to a plethora of voices daily, but never hear our own voice. We seldom know what it is we believe, and worse, are often unable to articulate it when asked to do so. I believe there is an inner spirit in each of us that guides our lives. For believers in Christ, we pray that it’s the Holy Spirit of the Triune God. For non-believers, it’s simply your voice speaking to you about who you are, what you desire, what you wish for the world to be. You can not hear this voice in the noise of the world because the mission of chaos is to drown it out.

Go into yourself, by yourself, and silence the world around you so you can hear what is happening inside of you. I realize that many of us have active lifestyles, and people that we care for daily. Sometimes, setting aside time for yourself is difficult to say the least, but it is imperative for solid physical and mental health. And, I can guarantee that in a miraculous fashion the time you give to yourself will multiply the time you have for others. Here are some tips for doing this successfully.

• Start slowly – An active, extroverted individual who attempts to sit in silence and solitude for an hour a day when he is not accustomed to do so will go insane, and almost immediately abandon the idea.  Give yourself ten minutes or so to start.
• In the beginning, avoid books – Even if you are reading a self-help/self-improvement book, or using Scripture for meditation, avoid taking it to your silence session for the first few days.  Take the time to simply be silent and alone.  I promise your head won’t explode, the walls will not crumble around you, and your email inbox will still show unread messages when you return.
• Add time gradually – Add another ten minutes or so each week until you’ve reached an hour.  At this point, you’re welcome to take a Scripture passage or a book along with you.  Read the passage before entering into your silence and solitude and take your alone time to meditate on the passage.  Reading is one of the ways we often use to distract ourselves.  This doesn’t mean that Scripture passages, or passages from self-help/self-improvement books can’t make good material for our periods of silence and solitude.  I just suggest that you do the actual reading before entering into your alone time.

Silence and solitude are completely necessary to maintain connection with yourself.  Smart phones and the Internet connect us to folks on the other side of the world in the blink of an eye, friends and family, and in some cases, unknown acquaintances.  Shut them off for an hour a day.  Connect with yourself.  Go to somewhere only you can go, and be silent enough to hear what you have to say.