I recently read this article, Science Says Silence is Much More Important to Our Brains Than We Think. Apparently, silence can restore brain cells?
Now, I have to admit, I don’t spend much time worrying whether I’m decreasing or increasing my personal inventory of brain cells, but if losing them is bad—and goodness knows there seem to be a lot of fun ways to do that—repairing, restoring, or increasing them should be good, right?
The basic message here is that silence can be beneficial. And, we have a lot of silence here on the homestead! I talk about this often, including In The Quiet of the Morning and Listening to Silence.
As always, I want to differentiate between silence and absence of noise.
An example of stillness, if not silence: snow drooping on the cherry tree. Stay with me on this, it gives me an excuse to publish these photos! (Photo: Mark A. Zeiger).
That’s an important point, perhaps best described in this article from Outside Magazine from a few years back, about the quietest spot in the contiguous 48 states. In it, Gordon Hempton, an acoustic ecologist in Washington state, differentiates between sound and noise. Sound is the “silence” of nature, ambient sound, while noise is the racket of man made activity.
The best illustration of this difference may be in the article itself. It includes an audio sample of a minute of “silence” in that “quietest place in the U.S.” It’s really quite busy with sound, although you can’t hear any noise in it, if you accept the article’s definition.
I’m proud to say I didn’t go up and poke at it after I took these photos, either! (Photo: Mark A. Zeiger).
To some, this may be simple semantics, or hair splitting. However, our homestead can be a pretty noisy place for all its silence. Our “silence” becomes more an absence of human noise than actual silence.
Still, I don’t doubt its restorative value. Far better to tune into the sounds of nature surrounding us than, say, city traffic. And, if the brain development study’s assertions are true, and one can benefit from as little as two minutes of silence, we definitely have that covered here.
Interestingly, I’d been thinking about the “default mode” mentioned in the article before I read it (without benefit of that particular term, of course). I’ve noticed that I spend a good deal of my day in that particular mode. Especially during the work week, when Michelle and Aly are in town, I would have to actively break out of that mindset to leave it—should I somehow want to do so.
Maybe I ought to turn myself in to the researchers behind the study?
Nope. If I did, they’d send me to a city somewhere to be studied.