Noise, Silence, and the Soul
I’m constantly absorbing information.
When the alarm clock forces me to crack open my crusty eyelids, I reach over and turn on a podcast. The disembodied voice chauffeurs me to the bathroom as I get ready for the day.
On my commute, a YouTube video essay accompanies me down the highway, booming through the stereo. When I get to my office, I open up my computer and immediately start reading emails.
After work, another video lecture accompanies me back home. A podcast comes back on as I throw on some gym clothes and sweat it out.
Spotify playlists then serenade me in the shower.
To wind down, I boot up a video game or a TV show. Sometimes the podcast keeps playing on the side during the mindless video game.
Then I read one of the waiting volumes on my shelf. Gotta get a few pages in before bed.
Sleep. Alarm clock.
Repeat.
Long articles. Short essays. Hour-long lectures. Minute-long reels. Entertaining movies. Inspiring documentaries. An endless input of words, words, words.
It makes me feel productive. I like thinking of myself as someone who is constantly learning, working, growing. Absorbing gigabytes of information per day makes me feel like I’m doing something useful, or that I’m making the most of every moment. After all, gotta respect the hustle, right?
But what do I have to show for it? How have I changed? How am I living more intentionally and making better decisions due to all the content I consume?
It’s a hamster wheel. Lots of energy. Hardly any progress.
Something is missing.
My ears don’t get a break. My mind never stops being bombarded with a fire hydrant of outside voices. I can easily get 15-20 different voices in a day talking to me about everything from self improvement to stock market forecasts. But the one voice I fail to listen to—incidentally the most important one—is my own. My motivations. My intuitions. The subtle promptings of inspiration.
The voice of God, you could say.
Somehow we got this idea that progress is made only by receiving information from the outside. The rest of the world bombards us with promises of happiness and success, that we need one more video, one more book—one more newsletter?—to finally see the results we desire. But the real catalyst for change, as is the case for anything, is a grassroots effort.
It comes from our soul. We just spend so little time listening to it.
The still small voice tells us
who we are,
what we want,
what we need,
and what we’re made for.
Instead we allow the rest of the world to tell us these things and to drown out this voice. We ignore it our whole lives and then wonder why we feel lost.
It’s because we’ve lost our souls. We must find it again. And allow it to speak.
To do this, the soul needs space. Silence, intentionally carved out.
Set aside.
Sacred.
Holy.
The soul needs Sabbath, not just in the week but in the day. Away from the noise, the opinions, the hustle.
We chase more information, believing the answer is somewhere out there. Utopia, we seem to believe, is built on scientific breakthroughs and economic development. We can somehow learn our way into paradise. But I think the last 50 years have shown us otherwise, and the development of AI technology will continue to prove otherwise: that external development is not enough, and may in fact kill us, in the absence of internal transformation.
Stay purposeful.
– Nathanael
I think a great supplement to this essay is my recent X thread on the symbolic meaning of the ear:
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