Silence, please

In a world that can not stop talking, silence really is golden - and has been more difficult to exploit than diamond. But it is indeed possible to find stillness in our lives. Find out how.


Is not it curious (and even paradoxical) that we have used more than 2000 words just to write a story about silence? Well, strange as it may sound, the silence became an expensive simple affair and nothing in these present days. It has been increasingly difficult to seek moments of stillness in a world that just does not stop talking and has increasingly spoken. Oops, I'm not what I'm saying, according to a study at the Center of the Global Information Industry, the University of California, have been words exchanged 4.5 trillion in the United States in 1980. In 2008, that number grew 140% - the computers of the Center estimated that Americans used 10.8 trillion words in last year's survey. "We certainly got more information than we can absorb or really listen," says director Roger Bohn. "It is curious to think that the new generations that are already being created with their smartphones in the hands never have, indeed, experienced the full silence," he says.

Indeed, it is hard to remember the last time we experienced this ourselves full stillness. If you had an end of year as gone as mine, you know what I mean. "Silence is endangered." Coming from anyone else, the phrase could just sound like a grumpy complaint. Coming of Gordon Hempton, however, she has much to tell us. While still a university at age 27, he made a trip from Seattle to Washington, in the United States, when he decided to stop on the road to get some rest. Got out, walked to a green area and lay down on the grass. Then he heard the noise of what should be a cricket. "That was the first time I really listened," he says. Since then, Hempton became an acoustic ecologist and, in the last 30 years, went around the world three times to get the various sounds of nature - those that arise only in the most untouched and deep silence. Much more than hundreds of rare recordings (many of them available on iTunes), the experience helped him find the quietest place in the United States, an area of "one square inch" (or about six cm 2) located in a zone forest in Olympic National Park in Washington State. According to him, one of the few places in the country (and the world) isolated from noise caused by man.

One square inch of silence is not just symbolic. We were deliberately eliminating any measure of silence in our lives. "Modernity is necessarily noisy," he says. We exchanged the engines of the cars by the turbines of the plane, the towel for hair dryer, a vacuum sweeper by. Nothing is becoming quieter. Introspective or even in sacred places, the silence became oppressive rather valuable. Something is changing in the physical and social in relation to noise levels of the world. "And also in cultural levels," says Sara Maitland, author of The Book of Silence. "People are more encouraged to talk about` isso¿ "says Sara, who spent years researching our relationship with silence. Expose yourself about everything became a virtue, believes. "We need to give voice to the oppressed, men need to talk about their emotions, women articulate their grievances," he adds Sara. In an era where every opinion is valid, everyone wants to give their opinion, whether in meetings of the companies in the restaurant tables or, more recently, uncensored, on social networks.

Cry Freedom

It is the historical moment in which we live, mad with technology - and especially with the possibility of her wordy. We use most of our waking hours texting, emailing, tweeting and typing in all types of fabrics that meet our toes ahead. In this sea of information, we do not want to be drifting. We must be alert to any noise that make our cell, on a need to feel connected to people and the world. This created a dependency that simply can not be silent. "Today, it's difficult to finish a meal with friends without someone refer to their iPhone to remember some fact which recall used to be the direct responsibility of the brain," says the American writer and essayist Jonathan Frazen. If technology can have a clear benefit to outsource many of brain relegated to tasks such as storing phone numbers, information and commitments as an external hd's mind, she did not release this "empty space" to allow us more stillness . "I only helped increase our anxiety, the worst side effect of this noisy world," he writes.

"They say to us that we continue to economically competitive, we must put aside the teaching of the humanities and instill in our children 'paixão¿ by digital technology, preparing them to spend the rest of his life in a permanent reeducation, allowing them to monitor news "ponders the writer. Many parents have taken it seriously, creating crowded agendas for their children from a very young that pervade Mandarin classes and even computer, all in the name of a bright professional future. Children have so many commitments that they lack time to simply play. And this lack of time for leisure is something that is being taught to the children, who, as said Professor Roger Bohn earlier this text, unaware of the value of silence. Concerned about this new pace of childhood, which also printed the lives of their own children, the British journalist Carl Honoré wrote a book (titled Under Pressure) against the idea of superparents, which helped give strength to a movement that became known as slow parenting, or how to raise unhurriedly. The intent is to preach the deceleration of routine childhood with less commitments and more time to do nothing, just so they can sit still and even bored. "Parents who follow this movement seek to provide time and space for their children to explore the world in their own way, at their own pace," says the author.

From childhood to adulthood, the reeducation of time and stillness has become something more urgent, even (and curiously) the corporate media. Large companies such as Nike and General Mills, have encouraged their employees sitting around doing nothing and even offer them courses to teach them how to do it. Consultants have been hired to teach techniques such as pausing before considering more complex tasks (such as face meetings or to respond to some e-mails) to visualize good wishes coworkers with whom the relationship is not so good. "People have a hard time stopping, to stay silent. Our society has created an image that silence is unproductive, as we have just seen the opposite," says the French entrepreneur Loïc Le Meur, who created a program for those who want learn to detach. It is an application that downloaded by cell phone brings together ten steps for you to learn how to find the break in their routine. Get Some Headspace baptized, he intends to help you to have more silence and pauses in the day.