The Adventure of Silence

 Today's blog post is based on a podcast from The Art of Manliness:

We live in an age of noise. Not just audible noise, but visual noise. It seems like you can’t go anywhere these days without something or someone vying for your attention. My guest today thinks all this noise has made us a bit crazy, and that we need to re-capture the power of silence in our lives. He came to this realization while traveling alone, by foot, for fifty days to the South Pole. Since having that experience of what he initially found to be a disturbing level of silence, he thinks other people need more space for quietude in their lives.

I'm a big fan of silence. I don't have audible alerts on my phone for texts, messages, email, etc. Although I do have them on for phone calls and a few other things. I also don't listen to music, or even audio books, while I drive. Occasionally, I'll listen to an audio book, but not usually. In fact, I didn't listen to any music or anything during my trip to and from San Diego, plus no TV while I was there...just enjoying the silence. I will watch TV on the weekends when I'm home but very seldom during the week.

Although, I'm quite often distracted by my smartphone, even though I have the alerts turned off. I need to work on that.

On Monday, when I was at A Leg Up networking group, Kimmer Sue was talking about marketing and how the average person receives about 5,000 marketing messages a day! Thankfully, without radio and television I manage to miss a lot of them...but there are still many on billboards and social media.

Here are the highlights from the show:

• How and why Erling became an explorer 
• How Erling balanced exploring with his workaday life (including being a parent and lawyer)
• What led him to study philosophy at Cambridge?
• Why Erling argues that we should make life more difficult 
• The two forms of boredom 
• What is silence? Is it simply the absence of sound?
• What does philosophy have to say about the idea of silence?
• What it was like to be alone at the South Pole for 50 days 
• How words themselves limit our experiences 
• Why Erling didn’t feel the need to curse while alone at the pole
• What is it about silence that makes us uncomfortable? 
• What art can teach us about silence?
• How can regular people find their own South Pole and experience silence?

Are you getting enough silence in your life?

Interesting days

Today - Be An Angel Day, Take Your Cat to the Vet Day, Pecan Torte Day and Eat A Peach Day

Tomorrow -  Ride the Wind Day, Valentino Day, Burger Day, Cuban Sandwich Day and Sponge Cake Day

Next Wednesday - Potteries Bottle Oven Day, More Herbs, Less Salt Day and Individual Rights Day

September 22 - White Chocolate Day, Doodle Day, Elephant Appreciation Day, Dear Diary Day, World Car Free Day, Business Women’s Day, Ice Cream Cone Day, International Rabbit Day and Hobbit Day