Since when did doing nothing become so difficult?
The ability to access phones and virtual entertainment effortlessly has made us lose the ability to be in silence.
Picture this: when you’re in the car, you used to look out the window, but now you just doomscrool. Every silent second in our lives is filled up.
Today, silence is filled up by looking for something to do, but before technology this was different. There wasn’t always something to watch or play. People often had to entertain themselves, which meant that waiting for something meant simply waiting in silence. You could daydream, talk, look around, draw, write, or even do nothing. But now it might feel like wasted time.
Silence isn’t wasted time. It is time for your brain to think, whether you are looking out a bus window, taking a long walk, or simply sitting. It is when you get the best ideas, since it’s the activation of the Default Mode Network (DMN). The default mode network is basically your brain’s internal system that activates during daydreaming and self reflection. It’s the one time your brain isn’t stressed, and your mind has room to make connections it couldn’t when it was stimulated.
Take that silence away, and you don’t just take silence away, but the ability to think more.
That gap didn’t disappear on its own, it was designed to. Apps are created to keep your attention.. Constant notifications and endless reels leave no room for silence. This is what social media is meant for–to hold your attention for as long as possible. The more you spend time on it, the more it works, so eventually the silence that helped you, is now replaced by your daily doomscrolling timefilled up.
Silence comes as a disguise: it didn’t disappear, our definition of it just changed. We used to think silence meant having absolutely nothing to do. Now even a few minutes without stimulation feel wasted, or unproductive. We have become so used to having something to do, somewhere to be or something to achieve, that a quiet afternoon that once felt normal now feels like wasted time. Maybe silence isn’t what changed but we, as a community, did.
Silence did not die, it’s still out there. It just stopped being the default. It was what used to happen to us the second nothing else was, but now it’s something you have to choose. Maybe this is not bad, but just a new responsibility.
The silence doesn’t reach you automatically any more. You have to go look for it.
Written by Krish P, Staff Writer at The Woodstocker
Edited by Tisya K and Arjuna T, Chief-Editors at The Woodstocker
