If You Turn Down Your Noise, You Might Finally Hear The Truth

I like to sleep with the radio on. But not because I listen to it. It’s the noise I need.

That constant hum of static, chatting and breaking news helps me block out everything else. It keeps me from thinking about actually needing to fall asleep. It prevents me from reeling over the details of the day or what needs to happen tomorrow.

But there’s a cost to sleeping with the radio on all the time.

It means without it, I don’t sleep at all.

There are other costs too. The radio also blocks out some of the good stuff, like rainstorms and wind in the trees. I can’t hear the faint cries of my daughter down the hall or the bubbling fountain out on my patio. And honestly, it probably leaves me more vulnerable to not hearing a thief trying to quietly slip into the house at 3 o’clock in the morning.

But I need a way to escape the silence, so I take that risk.

I need my noise.

We’re like this with a lot of things. We get so used to the convenient, low hum of our white noises of choice that we are no longer comfortable just sitting still. Quietness and being alone with our thoughts can be scary. We need a little something extra to drown out the silence.

The noise is often just a Band-Aid to pain. The low hum helps us from facing the deeper parts of our story. The incomprehensible chatter in the background fills the lonely space.

At the core, noise is escapism, yet it keeps us from being free.

And the only way to overcome escapism is to stick around. To stay in some of the silence. To allow yourself to sit with what hurts. To grieve what has been lost. To allow your thoughts to move to the deeper, unexplored places of your story.

It won’t be easy.

Trust me, I know. I have tried to turn the radio off at night, and quieting my life often feels virtually impossible. But what might happen if we bravely embraced the quiet?

I believe on the other side of our discomfort with silence is a symphony of new sounds waiting to be discovered. It might be where you discover a new truth of who you are and a song of freedom that you’ve been waiting to hear.