The Power of Silence

Keeping at bay the connectivity we are increasingly hardwired to adore.

Mark Dunwoody
3 min readOct 1, 2021
Photo by Andraz Lazic on Unsplash

We live in a world that works as hard as it can to banish silence from our everyday existence. Silence is the enemy of ease: it is seen as something to be avoided, a moment of awkwardness between conversation, rather than something useful and valuable.

Yet, many people today are yearning for the opportunity to step away from the noise and busyness of modern life and rediscover the life-giving potential of silence. There is a realisation that in losing silence, we have lost something that can add value to our lives: both in our spiritual journey and our phycological well-being.

Soon enough, none of us will remember life before the internet. For those billions who come next, our online technologies, taken as a whole, will have become a kind of foundational myth. Just as previous generations were mesmerised by televisions until their sets were always left on, murmuring as consoling as the radios before them- future generations will be so immersed in the internet the questions about its basic purpose or meaning will not be asked. Something essential will be missing from their lives, something their ancestors took entirely for granted — an ability to be silent.

In his book Space Maker, Daniel Sih points out that human beings have lived in tribes for millennia, relying on each other for warmth, protection, and companionship. Until recently, we have shared life through our families and extended tribes. Though there are many benefits to how social media enables us to share life and do community together, the conditions are very different to the face-to-face environments that have shaped the human biology of our ancestors.

Technology is neither good or bad, nor is it neutral.

Melvin Kranzberg

Every revolution in how we communicate, from the papyrus — to the printing press — to Twitter — is as much as an opportunity to be drawn away from something as it is to be drawn towards something.

As we embrace the new gifts of technology, we usually fail to consider what they ask from us in return, and sometimes we hardly even know what we exchange for these miracles services. We don’t notice, for example, how the gaps in our diaries have disappeared. We forget the childhood games that emerged from boredom because boredom itself has nearly been outlawed.

It’s probably no coincidence that the ramping up of more technology in everyday life parallels the rise in the belief that something is missing in our lives.

Just as we decide to limit foods that aren’t healthy for us, we must now choose to sometimes keep at bay the connectivity we are increasingly hardwired to adore.

To understand our current predicament. We must create connections back to the purposes of our lives. To find meaningful purpose, we need to get answers in every corner of our experience- especially as we continue to unknowingly neglect our spiritual rhythms of life by adding to the ever-constant need to feel digitally connected.

So what might it be about silence that both attracts and repels us?

May it be the emptiness it can bring?

For silence takes away our distractions and leaves us with ourselves, and of course, with God. In silence, there is no hiding place in the chatter of life.

Silence is a space where we are forced to encounter our most intimate selves, spending time with our inner truths. From the richness of silence, we will move into the riches of creativity and spiritual potential.

We must remember that technology can, at the same time, alienate us from some part of our lives and reveal miraculous new ways to live as better human beings. Our job is to notice the disparity. And then, every time, choose.

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Mark Dunwoody
Mark Dunwoody

Written by Mark Dunwoody

Coach, author, podcaster & Founder of the Healthy Rhythms Coaching

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