Hello, and welcome back to practicing human, the podcast where every day we're getting a little better at life.

I'm your host, Corey Miscarra, and in today's episode, we're going to talk about silence and why it can be scary.

More to come on that in a moment. First, let's settle in together with the sound of the bells.

Okay. So silence. There's a quote, a song lyric by Pink that says, the quiet scares me because it screams the truth.

Love that one. Yeah, silence. Notice what your relationship to silence is. Is it something you crave?

Is it something you think you crave, but when you're there, it's actually terrifying.

Is it something you just know you're terrified of and do all you can to avoid it?

Silence is interesting because on some level, a lot of us have been experiencing more silence recently.

At the time of recording this, just due to the pandemic, there might be more isolation than usual and more silence than usual.

And of course, that's not true for everyone. There's some who it's much louder, especially if you have small kids.

Now, I'm a proponent of the transformative power of silence.

One of the reasons why I say silence is interesting, especially in the context of right now, is that it often seems that we don't always use the transformative potential of silence.

It could actually lead to more loneliness, more disconnection, more distress, rather than being seen as an opportunity for reconnection with oneself.

Or to start to see things that we might not otherwise be able to see when we're caught up in the noise and the busyness of our life.

And this is one reason why on the whole, I'd argue that most people don't spend enough time in silence.

And that's because it can be really uncomfortable.

Humans are incredibly good at defending against uncomfortable experiences.

Have you noticed this? Maybe in your own life.

If there's something uncomfortable that we're unwilling to feel, you know, sadness, grief, sense of unworthiness,

even a feeling of confusion in our life, not knowing what the right path is or loneliness, we tend to be very good at avoiding feeling it,

maybe staying really busy, distracted, caught in thoughts, and not getting still and quiet enough to actually hear and feel what's beneath the surface.

That's one of the powerful things about silence.

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