I said I’d blog to let you know how I got on with my 24 silence. 24 hours actually turned in to about 36 as one of my delightful facebook friends Uti commented that perhaps it would be better to end the silence in the morning rather than when I’m about to go to bed. So it finished this morning, more or less when I got out of bed.
Irony of ironies I developed a really sore throat on the Sunday and so was unable to bloody speak yesterday even if I wanted to! I felt a little bit cheated by that, like it had somehow lessened the experience? Actually that sounds ridiculous and for everything a reason so I’m down with it. I guess I could see it as the universe supporting me in my quest 😉 Strangely my throat is fine today…
The silence thing by itself was a total piece of piss until I ventured outside. When I was in the house with the husband it was really easy and good fun. Do you know what I spent most of the time doing? Laughing! Rod kept making me laugh, mostly by deliberately misinterpreting my dodgy attempts at conveying something with sign language. Turns out I’m pretty pish at sign language although I do know the alphabet in sign language. Rod was guessing all the wrong letters so that was ridiculous to the point of farcical.
So yeah, I decided to go in to town to get some raw choc and chai (two of my favourite things). It was uncomfortable a couple of times not saying thank you in the shop and when someone bumped in to me and said sorry I didn’t say that it was ok and didn’t feel I could chase after him to show him my face being ok with it. Does that make sense? A smile would’ve worked fine if only he could see it…
I wrote a little note to say I’d lost my voice to give to the man in the tea shop. Interestingly one of the women that works there said she didn’t believe me and asked whether I was on a vow of silence! How cool is she? I’ve only spoken to her a couple of times. In retrospect I should’ve totally said yes because I accidentally said something later on and felt like a right idiot 🙂 Oops! That was my only slip. Apart from bursting in to song a couple of times…
So what did I learn from the experience?
I’d say first of all that 36 hours seemed far too short, either that or I found it too easy. I could’ve quite easily continued this for a week and think I would’ve got more out of it. That’s not to say it was a total waste of time. My relationship with my husband for one was very different, nice and err, peaceful! I felt peaceful. Everything felt nice and peaceful! Not sure it’s something you could really do long-term if you’re going to be married to someone of course…
Also I felt much more creative in that time, lots of ideas were coming to me and I ended up writing a lot, even some poetry! Not done that since I was 17!
I guess the main thing I experienced was feeling much more calmness. Life was still going on all around me but I wasn’t reacting to it by verbalising my endless stream of thoughts. The compulsion to speak is so fast that it’s great to have time to think about what you’d really like to say before you say it. Silence of course takes that whole thing out the equation because you can’t speak at all. We verbalise our thoughts so instantly that perhaps we take away the opportunity to question or learn from them?
Would I do it again?
Oh yes! I’m actually really looking forward to doing another silence, it’s just fitting it in with social engagements that’s the tricky bit. When I go to Iceland I’m sure there’ll be more opportunities for silence.
Next time I’ll be upfront and say (or rather write) what it is I’m doing so I don’t get caught out by savvy tea servers!
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