On our planet, we have explored every land and sailed every sea. The explorer might feel at a loss. And yet, there remains an island that has become almost inaccessible in some parts of the world: silence.
Silence, a rare and precious commodity, is disappearing without anyone seeming to care, as though humanity needed noise to protect itself and come to terms with itself.
For silence is not merely an absence; it is a state. A state of anxiety, rejection or domination for some. Then silence is cursed, an anomaly to be stifled. A state of tranquillity, introspection or inspiration for others. And it becomes something worth seeking.
But silence is growing shorter, vanishing without warning, amid widespread indifference.
And yet, silence is our precious ally. The one that allows us to exist, for we truly exist only in the silence of others. The one that expands our awareness, for our thoughts struggle to emerge amid the din. The one that allows surprise to arise—the kind born of awkwardness, embarrassment or shyness. The one that awakens love, for feeling can only spring from listening. The one that nourishes our connection with nature, for without silence, it becomes impossible to hear a bird singing or the footsteps of a roe deer.
Silence is also a friend to our ears and minds, offering them the rest so essential to clarity. By turning away from silence, we, devotees of noise in all circumstances, real or virtual, risk surrendering ourselves to the frenzy of shouting and algorithms.
Rather than imagining a world in which silence would be confined to the safety of parks, like a protected species, or relegated to places rarely visited, what if we realised that silence, like the air we breathe, cannot be bought or bargained for?
Today, we often deign to grant silence just a single minute, after a death or a disaster. What if we made it an everyday source of support instead, taking the place of relentless demands on our attention? A coach with no connection, no notifications, no ready-made answers, no impulse to act.
So yes, silence is not an easy friend. It is neither polite nor accommodating. Yet it is a doorway to being, to the self and, in that sense, it prevents us from outsourcing our intelligence: it forces us to let it emerge from within. At a time when we can outsource ever more of our intelligence, the search for silence may well become one of the ways we keep ourselves from fading away.
