A Silent World Speaks (By SooDoneWithYou)

Prologue

Imagine starting your day in a dark, but still oddly warm atmosphere. You drowsily get out of bed and onto a bus with other dreary guests. You sit on that melancholy bus, resting your eyes and feeling relaxed by the subtle movements and turns. The bus takes you to where you're meant to be, and you step out.

Immediately, the once warm feeling is replaced by a chill breeze as you follow your guide. He leads you to a fence overlooking what seems to be a sea of darkness. You stand there with the other guests, shivering in the frosty climate. The only sound to be heard is the wind, as it passes by your body, leaving behind only a pair of frigid hands. You know what you're here for though, and all that's left now is to simply wait.

After the much awaited lapse in time, it finally begins. You see the ever so faint azure of the sky, and a light orange on the horizon. What follows gives you an incredible feeling. First, the sky closer to you turns from black, to navy, and finally to a deep blue. Next you notice the puffy, white clouds, but unlike usual, they're now sitting below you. It's like a sea of cotton candy that you wish you could take a dive into. The horizon becomes a pinkish orange as the sky takes on a slight yellow tint. Holding your breath, you just want to see more. Experience it, savor it, don't let it go. I want to stand here forever. The cold has served to sharpen your senses, and the sight of these colors is astonishing. The oranges reach to the sky and reveal the mountains below you. The darkness from before reveals to be a deep crater, and the clouds are even more amazing than before. Finally, the sun, with all of its awesome light, reveals itself and makes the scene more than perfect. You're so engulfed in the experience that you forgot to notice, everything has been completely and utterly, silent.

Introduction:

Today's topic is, "Sound of Silence". I find this to be a very unique and intriguing topic, and definitely something worth exploring. In fact, it's something I experienced very recently. The scene I described above was an experience I had just yesterday when I was taken to the top of a volcano to witness a gorgeous and spectacular sunrise. The thumbnail is the last photo I took of the view. What I experienced was silent, yet it felt like the colors were singing to me. This is just one of the many ways you can listen without hearing.

In this thread I'm going to be going over some of the ways sounds exist in silence. I hope you enjoy, and good luck to my opponent, Nishi.

Your Mind:

The world is an amazing place that speaks volumes even during quiet hours, but your mind is no slacker either. Even while you're completely quiet, and the world around you is silent, your brain is hard at work. Your subconscious is processing 20 million bits of information per second. To put that into perspective, your conscious mind only processes 40 bits of info per second.

The mind actually does more work while you're sleeping, which is often the quietest part of the day. You could say that that silence makes your brain louder. Loud noises have been shown to increase stress, while silence has done the reverse, which releases the tension on your brain and body. This is why silent meditation has been such a popular and successful way to relieve stress and calm you down.

Your Mind (continued):

Another, often unappreciated feature of the quiet is that your mind begins to look introspectively. Instead of drowning out your thoughts with background noise, you have only yourself to listen to. Take that time seriously, and treat it with care. Those moments may be some of the most important in your life. Think about who you are, what you're doing, and why. Wonder, and don't be afraid to admit when you don't have the answers. That's what these times are for. Use them well.

In a Second

A second is just a moment in time. I ask you to take the time to sit in a quiet room for just a second. What happened within that second?

Well, first of all, light just traveled 299,792 kilometers or 186,282 miles. Aka it just traveled through your entire eye in about 0.0000000000800555051502...ect, of a second. However, you still haven’t seen that light yet. This is because the information hitting your eye and then to reach your brain takes about 17 milliseconds or 0.017 seconds. Therefore, you're seeing time about 0.0170000000800555051502 seconds after it hits your eye.

About four babies are born. That means four new human lives have been brought into the world every second. However, two people also die. An old Native American proverb is, “We don’t inherit the Earth from our ancestors, but borrow it from our children”. So, for every two adults that die, four new children will be there to claim back their Earth.

You may be asking how this all is relevant to this topic. Well, think about how loudly this world speaks even during a silent moment. There is never a time when the world is still, even if it may seem that way.

How Silence Can Hurt:

"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends"

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

The sound of silence isn't always beneficial. Sometimes it can be even worse than the noise. As the quote from the great MLK indicates, the silent killer is often what isn't said rather than what is. Similar in concept to how most of what people will regret at the end of their lives isn't what they did do, but what they didn't.

What exactly does this mean? Well, when King said this, he meant that the people who are your enemies are expected to come after you, but you expect your friends to speak up or act to help. That's why their silence is so painful.

This is a source of many problems today, such as people letting bullying continue to happen, even when it's right in front of them. This is an indication of a much larger problem, and that is apathy. We humans have a limit of what we can care about. Things that don't affect us much personally are taken with a grain of salt, at most. Things like world hunger are overlooked because the reality is that most of us just don't have the capacity to care enough to actually do anything, besides maybe donating a few dollars on a whim. I'm also guilty of this, but turning our heads to these issues, our silence, hurts more than the noise.

Conclusion & Questions:

I hope you've learned a lot today about how the quiet can be surprisingly loud and clear. From the breathtaking scenes of nature, to the effect that being quiet on an issue can have on the world, we've covered quite a bit of the sound of silence. Thank you for reading; I hope you enjoyed.

1.) How has silence affected your life? 

2.) Have you ever had an experience like mine? Describe it if you want to.

3.) What did you think of the thread?