In high school if we thought someone was talking nonsense we’d say, “Silence is golden, so shut up and get rich.”  If only I knew then just how valuable silence was.  This thought occurred to me this morning at school.  Do you have any idea how noisy a school gets?  Even if everyone is working, there’s always noise – the sound of the teacher next door teaching, the noise of learners changing classes, and don’t even get me started on breaks;  the staff room, supposedly a refuge against the noise, is just as noisy as outside, sometimes more.

At college I could not get enough of silence.  I studied at a small college in a small town nestled in the mountains, and silence was abundant.  It was the easiest thing to find a quiet place and simply revel in the silence.  I would spend hours a day simply listening to the sounds silence makes. Continue reading “On Silence” →