Reconnecting with silence

I paused along a mountain hike, feeling a keen tightness in my chest. It took me a while to realize, but I was having a physiological reaction to the hilltop’s oppressive absence of sound.

I mean, there was nothing to be heard. No cars in the distance. Not even the calls of birds.

As a society, we don’t talk much about types of silence. In Anglo-American legal systems, we consider it a right; in religious and formal settings, it conveys respect and prompts introspection. Yet, beyond these contexts, silence often unnerves us, creating a vacuum we feel compelled to fill—whether it’s with music in a store, white noise machines at bedtime, or our own constant chatter.

In that moment on the mountain, the silence had texture and layers. It unsettled and calmed me in ways I didn’t expect.

Perhaps silence stirs something deep within us because it brings us back to the beginning of our existence. Before we enter the world, we grow in the near silence of the womb. The muffled sounds of a heartbeat and distant echoes are the first sensations that cradle us before we’re introduced to the chaotic symphony of speech.

Maybe, as we go about our noisy lives, part of us still remembers that primal silence. We may not realize it, but when we encounter moments of true quiet—in nature, in a classroom, or within our own contemplative spaces—it feels familiar, like a return to something elemental, something human.

Instead of avoiding silence, perhaps we should embrace it. It isn’t an absence but a reconnection to what we’ve always known. A reminder of who we are and where we began.