The Paradox of Noise: Why We Fear Silence in a Noisy World

On a flight to Hawaii many, many moons ago, I decided to check out the in-flight magazine, a relic of the older days of air travel. I read an interesting article about the increasingly rare quiet places on Earth. It just so happened, one of the remaining quiet places was on the island of Maui, where I was headed.

This sanctuary of silence exists in the crater of Haleakala, the dormant volcano that forms the majority of the island. I regret I couldn't make it fully to the crater during my visit to the summit, but even along the way it was amazingly quiet. I could hear the footsteps of other hikers a mile away as if they were much nearer. And when all was still, I sat for a time and soaked in the blissful quiet and came to realize how very noisy the modern world typically is.

As I'm writing this, I'm sitting outside on a beautiful springlike day. Beyond the natural sounds—the gentle breeze, the melodic birdsong—there is an ongoing rumble of traffic on a nearby road. It's trash collection day, so I hear the waste management truck starting and stopping, the banging of trash containers on the truck and street.

Someone is apparently rehabbing an old minibike and revs the noisy engine as they're tinkering with it, occasionally taking it for a test drive in the neighborhood, drowning out all other sounds temporarily.

I'm an aviation geek, so maybe I'm more tuned into aircraft when they fly over, but that happens quite frequently. Small planes, jets, helicopters—whether 1,000 feet or 30,000 feet in the air—I can hear them overhead.

Because it's a beautiful day, someone is taking advantage and cleaning up their yard using a loud leaf blower.

I'm not knocking folks for taking care of business, but I do sometimes wonder what it would have been like to live on this earth before the advent of these machines. Can you imagine sitting outside and just hearing the sounds of nature for a time? There are fewer and fewer such places where that's even possible.

When I was a kid, I had a friend who lived with a train track at the bottom of his big backyard. I would be struck still by the thunderous noise when a train would roll through, stopping everything and being in awe of the powerful sounds and vibrations of the massive machine. But my friend and his family didn't even seem to notice. I couldn't imagine how they could just live normally while this immense pandemonium blasted through their day, but they did seem to have adapted to it.

But do we really adapt to noise? Studies show that while we can consciously adapt, physiologically we don't. Research suggests many physiological impacts of noise exposure, including:

It's fascinating that despite the obvious impacts of external noise, many people are actually uncomfortable with a quieter environment. Some folks feel uneasy if the TV isn't on all the time. The constant background hum of conversation, music, or electronic devices has become a security blanket.

When I encourage people to quieten and listen within, I think it's surprising and somewhat disconcerting for them to discover what's going on internally. Often there are difficult emotions, thoughts, or sensations right at the surface when we slow down and listen within. I believe that's what makes people resist a quiet environment and keep the external noise going—it drowns out the inner cacophony.

But that inner noise is just the outer layer. Once we can notice what's really present in that noisy, difficult outer layer and allow it to be rather than pushing it away or drowning it out, we can learn that it's less substantive and that it's fleeting. Creating space for silence helps us create greater inner space.

Perhaps the path forward isn't about eliminating all external noise, but developing a healthier relationship with both outer and inner silence. By occasionally seeking out quiet spaces—whether a dormant volcano crater or simply a moment with devices turned off—we give ourselves the opportunity to practice sitting with our inner noise rather than running from it.

In doing so, we might discover that what we've been avoiding isn't so frightening after all. And in that discovery lies the possibility of a more peaceful relationship with both the noisy world around us and the sometimes tumultuous world within.