Shhhhhhhh...

This morning, as I often do, I stopped at the convenience store to get a cup of coffee after I dropped Megan at school. I never have been a fan of Starbucks; I’ve never bothered with trying to learn the lingo (“Grande Double Mocha Skinny Latte Dolce Frappuccino, please.”), and I found it difficult to pay four or five bucks for a dose of caffeine I could get for considerably less money. Flavor seems irrelevant.

Well, not totally. I still reached for the darkest roasted coffee the shop had to offer, despite the fact that I had not had caffeinated coffee in several days, knew that I was reaching for the blend with the most substantial jolt, and didn’t mix it with the decaffeinated that I usually use to lighten in up. In doing so, I ignored that little voice that told me I was going to regret it later. And I did.

It was only about an hour and a half later that I got up from writing at my computer, and I could feel it, that sudden odd mixture of blood pressure and dizziness I recognized from before. It is an uneasy feeling; I dislike it, and I predict it every time just as surely as I choose to induce it, but I still fall into its trap every time. You would think I’ve learned by now. But in knowing it will happen, I also know it will pass, just as easily. I know it as surely as I knew I was ignoring that quiet, inner voice.

These days, when I run, I run quietly. I don’t mean that I run with light footsteps and inaudible breathing, I mean that I run without an iPod, or music or sound-producing gadgets of any kind strapped to any appendage or other body parts. I most often run alone, and I usually run a route that is away from heavy traffic, other runners, or the busy sounds that seem to permeate even the suburbs. At least half of my shortest route is on a gravel country road, and if I want to rack up the miles and do so with as much quiet as possible, I’ll avoid my longer routes and just circuit back over the short route. It runs out of a pretty quiet neighborhood, past a school, and out into the countryside and into the farm fields before it returns me to a main drag. I like to run it, as often as I can, around dusk or after dark. It is even quieter then, and darker, which makes the solitude of it almost palpable.

When I run, it takes concentration, and the quiet helps me focus on efficient running techniques, like trying to maintain a mid-foot strike, not extending my stride, lifting my knees correctly in height so as to pendulum and not force the lower leg, and my arm position and stroke. All of that is a great deal to try and keep moving in the correct manner, and I can’t say that I am able to do all of these things correctly in unison, but I know there is no way I could if I had any sort of distraction.

As an added benefit, the quiet also affords me the ability to hear my breathing, and my heartbeat, which I listen to not only as a measurement of how my body is reacting to the stress I am subjecting it to, but also as a anatomical equivalent of a metronome. Funny, but I feel some reassurance in being able to hear all of that.

When I move about in my neighborhood, and on that rare occasion when I encounter others on my runs, I see runners with iPods mounted and earphones firmly implanted, and I have to ask myself why they wear them. I mean, I understand why, really; they run with them so as to enjoy music while they run. Or so they tell me. But, they also tell me that it helps pass the time, that it helps them forget the long and dreary amount of time it takes them to run for any distance or any minutes. I have even met runners who measure their runs by the length and the number of songs they have in their favorite running playlist. In passing each other as we run opposite directions, I’ll wave and mete out a “Hello” from my breath if they look up to make eye contact, but most often they don’t, and even if they do they seem unable to say the same in return.

It is possible to argue that these musically cocooned runners and I are both trying to isolate, trying to tune out the rest of the world so that we can accomplish what it is we are so stringently focused on performing. But, I think there is a significant difference in seeking solitude in the relative quiet and trying to drown out everything else with noise. That’s not any judgment of their music selection, or music in general; it’s just the way I see what they use to overpower every other sound, internal as well as external. That is the part that puzzles me, and makes me wonder if they have ever tried the opposite, and if they did, why they didn’t like it.

I worry about this noise thing. I worry that we have ramped up our lives so much these days, with the inability to enjoy relaxation or quiet or a less frantic pace of activity. We—and to a degree, I have to include myself in this—keep our communication devices close at hand, wherever we go. There is no place our cell phones cannot invade, and with their convenience no place to feel free of them.

At home, it’s easy to keep the television on for our every waking moment, many times simply on for its own sake, or for background noise, or to keep us company. I can’t tell if we are trying to drive out the quiet, or if we are trying to drive out the solitude, or both. I have to ask myself if we need the distraction, or if we have become addicted to the pace and challenge of multitasking, or if it is that we actually fear what we might hear in the stillness, or fear being alone. Which is it that we are trying to drown out?

I used to be a news junkie. Whenever I was home and without the girls, I would always have the television dialed in to CNN. It was a way for me to stay wired and current with the outside world. I have long ago forsaken newspapers—a tragedy in itself, I guess—for the more immediate gratification of the constant feed. It looks like I’m not alone in that; newspapers across the country are on their way out because of people like me.

But, by accident, I discovered that I could write better, with more clarity and focus, when I did not have the television on at all. Then, not long after that, I discovered that I could no longer write at all with it on, even if the sound was turned completely down. From time to time, when there is something big and breaking going on in news, I’ve even tried to do both at the same time, and I cannot. I can’t even listen to the iTunes on my computer while I write anymore, which is a little bit disturbing, because I can remember a number of things I have been able to do during my lifetime with music simultaneously playing. Not any more, it seems. Except drive; I seem to still be able to drive with music playing in the car.

I don’t believe that I am an eccentric, nor do I want to believe that I am any kind of Zen master who should or wants to convert us all to a life of meditative silence without media, or electronics, or all of our other modern conveniences. It could very well be that I simply lack the ability to concentrate and focus as I used to be able to do, or that my mind is a little slower than it used to be and can’t absorb all of the sensory bombardment to which I have been previously accustomed. Now that I think of it, my mind might not be as fast as it used to be. But, I’m okay with that, honestly, if that is the case.

And, I am betting I am not the first, last, or only person to ponder some of the things I inquire about here, question whether or not we move too fast and too loudly nowadays. I’m merely someone who has stumbled onto what it can do for me, what I can hear, when I am still enough.

© 2010 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.