🧠 Can you hear the silence?

Have you experienced silence recently? I mean real silence? For me, it feels like silence has become a rare and almost mythical concept. I’m never silent—and I believe many in my generation share this same feeling.

At the dining table, we eat, but we’re never really alone. We are accompanied by a screen, a very noisy screen. In the shower, instead of embracing our thoughts, we let a random YouTuber’s voice or Sabrina Carpenter’s latest album fill the space. The noise shifts from TikTok to TikTok, Reels to Reels, Shorts to Shorts. Our minds are on a constant rollercoaster of noise, aching for a simple, quiet moment that never comes. Some of us even sleep clinging to the very machine that feeds the noise (our so-called best friend, aka our biggest enemy).

But why is it so hard to embrace silence? Why do we shy away from it?

In a recent discussion with my therapist, I realized that the reason I hide behind the noise is because my thoughts scare me. The dopamine rush from constant distractions keeps me feeling safe. The lack of silence helps me avoid the weight of my responsibilities.

Have you ever stayed up late—like 4 am on a weeknight—and noticed the peacefulness? No one is online, no one is texting; it’s just you and your thoughts. At first, those thoughts seem overwhelming, but notice how they lose their power in the quiet of the night. The noise in our lives only inflates the monsters in our minds, but in reality, they aren’t so big. They’re not some seven-headed dog, they’re manageable.

We avoid silence because we associate it with boredom. In a generation obsessed with immediacy, boredom feels like the enemy. That's why we FaceTime people instead of sitting alone, or binge-watch YouTube videos to fill the imaginary void.

I once stumbled upon a concept called the Blue Hour—ironically, through a Reels. It explained, "Have you heard of the blue hour? Actually, it’s not an hour but a minute. Just before dawn, there’s a moment of complete silence. The day birds aren’t awake yet, and the night birds have already gone to sleep. For that brief moment, there’s real silence."

Real silence. How fascinating. Are we ever truly silent? I can hear the clicks of my keyboard as I write this, even though the room itself is quiet. Before bed, I hear the gentle hum of air passing outside my window. Even in stillness, there’s always some external noise—a car, an insect, the hum of life around us. Could real silence happen at 3 pm on a random Tuesday, or is it a luxury reserved for the bats and the night owls?

"All profound things and emotion of things are proceeded and attended by silence."- Herman Melville (American novelist)

A moment of silence, A Silent March, Kissing someone you love – It's silence that makes these rituals so powerful. Nothing to distract oneself from its purpose. By keeping quiet we become receptive to our surroundings. According to Pythagoras: "A fool is known by his speech, and a wise man by his silence." Silence helps us gather information about ourselves. Learning. Evolving. When we quiet down we observe that "we are not our thoughts". According to Einstein, silence stimulates a creative mind and during research on the "aha" moment, it was learned that "Insights require a quiet mind because they themselves are quiet".

I decided to take a shower in silence. As I craved music and noise, there was no music, no noise, no podcast, just me and the sound of water. And in that silence, I felt clarity. I processed my thoughts without interference, and afterward, I felt more ready to tackle the day. Boredom, I realized, isn’t the enemy. It helps us think logically, stay focused, and give our minds a break from constant distractions.

I love those late-night hours when my phone isn’t pinging with notifications, and I can sit with my thoughts. But despite that love for silence, I can’t always embrace it. And that's okay. Maybe it’s a Gen Z disorder, or perhaps we’re just conditioned to the constant hum of noise. Is this avoidance of silence a problem for human development? Does it affect our ability to grow, reflect, or be truly creative?

I’ll let you think about it...