Silence

Continuing the journey through Will Schwalbe's Books for Living:  His chapter on 1984 focuses on disconnecting.  The chapter begins, "Imagine if there were a law decreeing that every citizen had to carry a tracking device and check it five times an hour."  You might see where he's going with this -- that if the obsessive way we check our electronic devices were mandated, such a law would be "deemed an insane Orwellian intrusion into our daily freedom, and people would rebel."  He takes his musings even further:  "Imagine that the law decreed that it wasn't enough to check your machines; you need to update the world on your activities on not one but several services, posting text, pictures, and links to let everyone know where you went, and everything you ate, and everything you saw."

Bottom line:  "These laws aren't necessary.  We do this ourselves."

What particularly struck me, though, was that in Schwalbe's re-reading of 1984 as an adult (having first read it when he was twelve), he notes one sentence in particular:  "Winston became aware of silence, as one becomes aware of a new sound."  Schwalbe asks:  "How often do I hear silence?  Between the buds in my ears when I'm out and the screens that are on when I'm in, the answer is simple:  hardly ever.  I miss it.  It's hard to remember what it sounds like and all the possibilities it allows.  Maybe that's the real tyranny of the smartphones and all the little screens everywhere.  They help us rob ourselves of silence."

Today I wonder:  How often do I hear silence?