Silence…
I hate silence, I bet most of you didn’t know that about me. Here I am one of the quietest people many of you will ever meet and I hate silence. Why? Oh, that’s simple, because I’m afraid of the silence. Did you know that it takes me half an hour to fall asleep every night? Yup, it takes me that long to quiet down my brain and fall asleep. At that I rarely ever sleep for more than 4 hours at a time… simply can’t handle it, my brain loves to think, run through situations, make up story lines, and in general be loud. See… being smart is the only thing that I regularly get complimented on, people that take the time to shut up for a second and listen to me always notice that I’m actually rather intelligent… this is the only thing that I am sure of myself in… and because of that I’m scared of being idle, I’m scared of my brain slowing down long enough that the world may pass me by in knowledge. I sit here all day studying, reading, learning, examining others opinions, scrutinizing everything, and tearing down the world around me so that I may see it up close viewing how it functions.
Most the time I blame the fact that I don’t remember new peoples names on the idea that I’m a Visual/Kinetic learner… when in reality when you give me verbal instructions I never even hear what you have to say… I can’t even sit still long enough to go through an entire church service without having a constant barrage of day dreams going on in the background… I’ve got to have something else going on in my world to keep my attention. Constantly there are story lines, images, and ideas flowing through my mind… they often get so cluttered that I can’t hear the world around me, becoming immersed in a world of my imagination, totally oblivious to this reality that merely surrounds me as background noise. All day long when I’m not around my sources of information I sit rehearsing what I’ve learned throughout the day, or week to keep myself sharp and able to recite correct information on any subject matter. Did you know that at any moment you ask me I can tell you the EXACT process as to why your eyes tear up when you cut into an onion? Why? Because I read it one day, found it interesting and recited it back to myself for weeks to come until it was so ingrained in my head that it will never leave me. Where as most of you use the provided WYSIWYG editors on webpages and sites I intentionally use straight code so that I don’t forget it… when I double space I actually type out the NBSP code, I use BR tags instead of striking enter when allowed, Bold, Underline, and Italic I do with HTML to keep myself on-top of proper use of code.
So the question stands: What is so wrong with silence? Why are so many of us scared to death of silence? Why is it that when things go wrong in our life we’re so prone to say “Oh, this must be God speaking to me, trying to reach me”? In the Bible Elijah was sent up a mountain to meet with God… while he was up there heavy winds came that shook the mountain, but God was not in the wind. Then came a huge earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake Then a fire swept across the mountain, but God was not in the fire. After all these had passed there was quiet, stillness, and in the quiet was God’s voice… You know I often say a huge turning point for me was the year I wrecked my car for the longest time I’ve always said “yeah, God was trying to get my attention, and it took something drastic like a car wreck to get it” when in reality… God was not in the car wreck, He was in the quiet months that followed, the solitude, and the loneliness… That is where God met me and spoke.