It’s totally attainable (if inadvisable) for me to eat a meal whereas careening down the freeway at 65 miles per hour and concurrently catching up with my school roommate over the cellphone. (For the document, the one time I’ve ever carried out this, we have been really within the automobile collectively—she was driving and I used to be consuming.) But it surely’s symptomatic, I believe, of our dependancy to multi-tasking that it doesn’t sound in any respect weird to recommend I’ll accomplish one thing “whereas I eat” or “whereas I drive to work.” When did it cease being sufficient simply to eat? Or simply to drive?
The explanation I’m noticing this stuff is that I gave myself the reward (curse? no, reward) of per week of media cleanse. AKA my “Week of Quiet.” I nonetheless bought on the pc as wanted to do my work, however I attempted to keep away from every other inputs—no scrolling by means of New York Occasions headlines between college students, no podcasts, no NPR within the automobile, no social media or tv watching and, hardest of all, no studying books.
A radical lower within the quantity of knowledge I’m force-feeding myself. Even the books. Perhaps particularly the books.
My mom tells a narrative: once I was little, the lecturers in school would encourage dad and mom to get their children to learn as a lot as attainable. “There’s no such factor as an excessive amount of studying!” they cheered. My mom disagreed and would lower me off from my whole immersion in Nancy Drew or the Chronicles of Narnia and pressure me to go for a stroll along with her, or water the bushes within the yard, or fold the laundry. I believe she noticed what I now additionally see—studying is a strong medication, and like all highly effective medicines, it have to be used thoughtfully.
A phenomenon I noticed once more as I put down the 5 books I used to be studying concurrently earlier than I began this week of quiet. (Fortuitously for me, I didn’t must put down all the books. No, the kids and I completed Fortunate Damaged Lady by Ruth Behar. I extremely advocate it.) It was a little bit just like the expertise of starting to get sleep after months (or years) of sleep deprivation. At first it feels horrible, disorienting, like standing with out crutches for the primary time (that’s a Fortunate Damaged Lady reference). However over the course of some days, I seen a quieting in my nervous system. A clearing of fog in my mind.
I ate lunch quietly right this moment. My favourite lunch is a bowl of leftover do-it-yourself soup, a chunk of bread and a e book to eat, I imply learn. However right this moment, no e book. Simply quietly ate. Not a nasty solution to refresh between morning and afternoon. As of tomorrow, my Week of Quiet will probably be over and whereas it’s not likely soup season, I can add again the e book. I’ve a plan to learn When Ladies Have been Birds by Terry Tempest Williams. However the different 4 books can wait. No must gorge myself.
That’s what I’ve taken away from the week of quiet. That quiet is a dreadfully scarce important nutrient. I can get by with out it, kind of, however I can’t thrive. And typically the perfect factor to do “whereas I eat” is … eat.
Perhaps you might use some quiet too? Could I like to recommend partaking in a minute, or an hour, or per week of quiet? I’d love to listen to what you discover!