Sound of Silence

Today I heard for the first time the music group Disturbed’s version of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence.” Growing up in the 60s & 70s, I was quite familiar with the original version of the song—I even learned the words by heart. The rare times these days when I do hear that song, I tend to mindlessly, yet harmonically, sing along. But today’s experience with the song was different. I would venture to say that this new version of the song teased my mind to truly listen to the lyrics. As I listened, and yes, even sang along, two phrases became particularly poignant and attention getting:  

“people talking without speaking” and  “people hearing without listening”  

The song played on, but these words swirled in my mind until they dipped down and touched my heart. I began to ponder the words, to chew on them, to turn them angle by angle so that I might observe any possible meanings seeking a hearing within my True Self. My realizations do not have to do with the overall meaning of the song; rather, they address what I have been learning to see in life.

We live in a world where silence is subservient to words. High quantities of words spoken at louder volumes yield greater power to the individual doing the speaking (or more accurately pontificating).

The skillful art of listening has been subjugated to verbosity. Many of us prefer verbose ramblings because we like the feel of the sounds sliding off our tongues and spilling over our loose lips. However, if we pay attention, we will see the eyes of our audience (even an audience of one) glaze over because our conversations have become monologues with multiple trajectories instead of a heartfelt true dialogue. We want so badly for others to agree with our perspectives and oft self-perceived cleverness that we delude ourselves into believing that if only they “hear” our multi-syllabic bead stringing, they will listen. Then we will win. What we will win is in question. But we feel like we’ll win. In reality, the only thing we have done is tired into silence those who very well may have held within them a nugget of insight that would have transformed our malignant egoic-perspectives of how we believe things to be.

Why are we this way? We are this way because our self-deluded egos are either licking the wounds of past experiences that lie secretly beneath the skin of our existence, waiting for an opportune moment to erupt and disrupt our lives. Or we are so obsessed with what life is going to hold for us at some point in the future, near or far, that the eyes of our false self become myopic.

Is there a remedy? Most certainly. The remedy is to live in the present, the very present moment where life happens. The past has passed. The future is not yet. The remedy seems simple enough, but it actually takes discipline to actualize. It takes discipline because clinging to the past, or obsessively longing for the future is like the tackiness of pine sap sticking to the bottoms of our souls or the tips of our fingers. The clinging distracts us from the task at hand, from the present. The result is failure to live with full awareness to and in the present moment.

The sound of silence is demanded of us if we are to be whole and complete human beings. The sound of silence nurtures us, enabling us to let go of grieving the past even as it frees us to glimpse the future, while not living for it. Mindfully living in the present moment clears the sap from our souls. Then we speak and not just talk; we listen not just hear.