Thoughts (or the removal thereof) and Quietness

Quietness doesn’t seem to be that difficult of a concept. Find a place relatively free from outside noise, sit there without doing anything else, and boom, you’re done, right? By those standards, living in a small town on the side of a mountain in Kenya should be just the ticket for all-you-can-handle quietness, yet of the many things I am learning during my time here, it is that quietness requires an elusive kind of mastery and (at least for me) a high degree of intention. I’m undoubtedly getting into an area of semantics here that could be argued one way or the other, but “quietness,” as I’m meaning it here, is not the same thing as “silence.” Even if I hike to a secluded location with nothing but the sounds of nature around me, I become aware of a running commentary from the mental peanut gallery, the sole occupant of which is, of course, myself. Take for instance this past weekend when my sister, her housemate, and I hiked up and around the crater of Mt. Longonot:

“This is really beautiful, huh? Man, it’s hard to believe views like these can even be real. Whoa, that crater is HUGE! It looks like a giant fishbowl for trees. That breeze feels so nice. This is really peaceful. Look at us; walking around the rim of a volcano. People should do this more often. Look at that those ants crawling out of that acacia tree. Just think, those guys have been going about their business for weeks or months, probably, and you’re just now becoming aware of them. Think about all the other stuff that goes on without you ever knowing about it. Kinda makes you feel small, doesn’t it? There are probably a lot of life metaphors you could draw from that: recognizing one’s own smallness by observing the smallness of ants. Look at us being all meditative! This is why people should do this, so they can think about stuff away from the hustle and bustle of life. Huh, these are some really thick layers of sandstone dust. It looks like we’re walking on the moon. Ooh, look at that bird! I’ve never seen feathers that color before. Just think of the genetic specificities that had to be in place so those feathers would develop with that particular hue which would absorb just the right wavelengths of light so the receptors in your retina could send a cascade of signals to your brain so it could interpret it as that color.  We’re observing so much right now…”

These thoughts have plenty of value in their own respects, but there are many times I want to tell myself to just shut up. I don’t devalue inner commentary or thoughtful contemplation, but I can’t help but marvel at how difficult it is to accept the sensations of my immediate world without any attempt to put my own spin on each. Of course, the world will always come to us through the bias of our perceptions, but what would it look like to stop there? No assignment of opinion, no creation of connections, no attempt to make sense, no assessment of value, just acceptance of being. Words are, by the very nature of their utility, limiting, and while they are fantastic for contextualizing and sharing ideas (Exhibit A: me writing this and you reading it), I wonder if we don’t sometimes blunt the outer edges of some moments by feeling the need to capture it in words or thoughts. That’s what I’m getting at here with the idea of “quietness”: attempting to turn off the inner categorizer, at least for a little while, so an experience can happen to you instead of you happening to an experience.

One of the beauties of being human is that we can share our views of the world with one another and find ways to express our inner workings, but what I want to learn how to do is delay that particular ability in order to give myself a chance to see or hear the things I may otherwise not through the noise of my own conjectures and comments. I think this is so prominently on my mind right now because I’ve recently become aware of an assumption I brought with me to Kenya that I could essentially receive the peace of my surroundings by osmosis. And while being here has without a doubt encouraged me to want inward quietness, I am now very aware that it cannot induce it. As unfortunate as it is to realize one has to actually work for self-growth, I would contend that it is a challenge well worth accepting.