Turn It Off and Find The Silence

Some days I listen to the radio on my way to and from work, more lately that my CD changer in the truck is inconstantly failing.

I have my radio set with twelve preset stations of, what should be, music. Most mornings it's more talks shows than music. They talk about some acts of stupidity, what was on TV last night, or some trivial moment in their childhood that, for the sake of rating, is important to air on the radio waves. Occasionally, there is a musical interlude before returning to advertisements for strip clubs, natural male/female enhancements, over-talking discussions by the DJs and guests and advertisements for televisions shows.

In the mornings, I often turn the radio off shortly after I turn it on.

The evening is somewhat better. I guess someone figured out that lively conversation isn't necessary to get the working class of America out of bed, motivate and/or outraged and off to work. There's more music, some news, the ever present advertisements. Ear candy.

In the evenings, I have started turning the radio off and rolling the windows down.

As I drive, windows down, ten to twenty miles an hour, I watch the rage-o-holics and resist the temptation to join in. Anger, like heat, is transferable. Unlike heat, the half life of anger is much longer that heat. Everyone is wound pretty tight. "Me first, you get lost" seems to be the America way these days, "Freedom" has become a word to express "me first".

I watch the two brand new trucks, shiny and insured, whip around each other, and jam on their brakes and collide. They repeat this dance of purposeful automotive assault a few times before one pulls over to, presumably, call for the police and the other slinks off, causing me and everyone around this drive to feel quite unsafe. Tense. Wildly agitated. I feel the anger flow off their actions and I feel that urge to strike back at the violence. It's there, below the surface, tightly coiled around my sense of self.

I know if I turn the radio on again, the music, if there is any, will "taste like copper" to me, that feeling that I have been infected with the metallic constraints of violence withheld. My experience desires action; my reason presents restraint; the conflict between creates the copper taste. If I turn the radio on, it will only be noise that will challenge the restraint. I leave it off and stay with the experience, as distasteful as it is. In the silence of the drive, I reflect.

I have noticed that I option to listen to music, radio, television, go to a movie or go to a bar for a drink, I am avoiding thinking about the experience. I don't learn from anything when I avoid the feelings of the experience. Avoiding doesn't mean I will forget. Like an emotional capacitor, I remember the experiences I don't reflect on immediately. Later, when a similar analog of that experience happens, I experience the previous incidents and the emotions of those in addition to what is happening in the moment. The emotional tension merely mounts with I avoid. In the silence, I reflect.

One of the reflections I take is of my limited knowledge of people. I only know something about my culture and my country. Some of what I see creates despair. Some of what I see creates hope. Most of what I see creates distraction: distraction for choosing, feeling and thinking. Distractions from Freedom.

Television, radio, music, Internet, magazines and newspapers to some degree - they present distraction. I feel that some present distractions for distractions sake. That is, they exist to distract and have no meaning of value unto themselves. I have to wonder if these distractions and our cultural conditioning to "bright and shiny" distractions services some less overt purposes. People that don't think are easy to misinform, easy to lead and easy to control. Quiet and docile slaves, ignorant of their captivity. And People that are easily distract don't think, they react. Like the two drivers: they weren't thinking. They were reaction.

It's difficult to combat ones own culture and aspect's of ones own country. I turn the television off, the radio too, and find a place and a way to reflect. In my youth, I rode a bicycle at night usually with hours of music. Sometimes I would turn the cassette player off and ride. Ride in the dark and silence and reflect. While rage, anger or loneliness may have put me on the back of a bicycle in the dark, I staid, riding, to reflect. I worked through my anger and some of my social awkwardness and learned to see larger patterns of behavior in myself and others. I become more a person in those quiet, reflecting moments. I was practiced.

Years later, I see many people that fear the silence, fearing what thoughts come to them in their own voice. My culture seems to feel that silence is a place to put up a advertisement for some distractions or that silence is for those that know of some nefarious deed.

I can live with and in silence and reflect because I am practiced. I can reflect, witness or experience and still choice my actions. Pure Reaction is the hallmark of the immature being. I am concerned that not enough people can deal the silence necessary to experience, reflect and practice choosing their actions. If most people can't find this place, my culture will corrupt my country and create more people like the two angry drivers, people who endanger my country with impulsive reactions without thought or responsibility.