The Sound of Silence

We live in a pretty noisy world. We are constantly bombarded with sound from televisions and telephones, computers and Blackberry’s, all demanding our immediate attention. And while I think this potential for communication is great, my own observation is that the gizmos keep us tethered rather than connected.

In communication theory the actual process of communicating is quite complicated and filled with lots of opportunities to mess up: we can encode a message improperly, we can send it along a poor channel, it can become distorted by various kinds of “noise”, it can be improperly decoded … about a million chances to make certain that what I said is not what you heard. And a big part of this problem is that we don’t really listen. We may hear, but we just don’t listen.

There is a neat scene in Pulp Fiction where Mia (Uma Thurman) says to Vince (John Travolta), “Do you listen or just wait for your turn to talk?”

I think that is a key point – most of the time we wait for our turn to talk rather than really listening, and miss a whole lot as a result. Our ego needs are so great that we find it impossible to be silent and listen.

Silent is an anagram for Listen. Being Silent is not necessarily an absence of noise, an external reality, but rather the intentional focus of one’s attention, an internal decision. There is a lot of road noise on a motorcycle, even with ear plugs. But that doesn’t stop you from Being Silent and hearing many things that would otherwise float away.

I was headed down the road, cruising along the Mississippi River towards Memphis. As I was rolling along a song started playing in my head: Precious Lord, by Tommy Dorsey. I don’t have an iPod or MP3 player, so the only music I hear on the road is what rolls around in my brain. Usually the music is classic rock & roll or Reggae but Gospel music is virtually NEVER part of the playlist.

But the song was there and it was on replay, so I just went with it and was quite surprised at how much of the tune I actually knew – I guess a lifetime in the church has left its’ mark! Eventually the song ended its run and I pulled into Memphis and headed for the National Civil Rights museum, located in what was the Lorraine Motel, the location of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. As I worked my way through the motel I was reminded of how our legal system has so often sanctified injustice.

At last I made my way to the site of the assassination and was stunned by what I read: Dr. King was standing at the railing speaking to the band leader for the evening, making sure that his favorite song, “Precious Lord” was played that night, when the bullet struck.

Wow. For just a little while on that road to Memphis I had been listening, really listening to something far beyond my comprehension. And as I stood in silence and awe I wondered: How much have I missed just because I couldn’t be silent and listen?