A little while ago I was down in the south of Italy, seated on a balcony and cozying up to some twisting and unglamorous seaside pine trees. The trees made me feel at home, if only because they remind me of the scrub pines where I grew up. I was far from any city and could hear the wind mixing with the Mediterranean Sea as everything moved under a midday summer sky.  A scene to behold, until all of a sudden my world was interrupted by a loud yet low-pitched chirping noise. The kind of sound that a smartphone might offer as an alarm tone. What in the heck is that racket?

Of course, I knew that it had to be some kind of animal or insect—the sound was so loud, yet I was unable to locate the source. I squinted at the nearest pine tree. I knew that it had to be there—yet nothing. It wasn’t until a local came by that I understood that these were of course cicadas, and he looked at the pine and expertly pointed out the source of the noise. For them, this is a normal part of life. 

This particular experience weaves in with a larger, more gentle state of existence that I’ve been thinking about lately. It’s about the different kinds of baseline silences that aren’t actually silences at all. But each specific blend speaks to the variations in how we would define silence and serenity. And of course in my bones I have always known this, it’s just right that now I have managed to put a name to it. 

I can step outside first thing in the morning and observe what the canvas is. It’s not a silence exactly because of course there is always something moving through the air. It’s more just a comparative analysis between what we identify as racket and otherwise.

For example, early summer mornings on Cape Cod serve as my own personal baseline of silence. I have known this since I was a kid—always with a sharp ear to record the sounds that are strongest in the warm. Months. And this year, my brain recaptured all of this against a summer of humidity with an 80% chance of rain, cloud cover, and more blooming hydrangeas than I ever realized taking up real estate around me. 

Being back on Cape Cod, I could take notice of all of this before I even open my eyes. Like we had as kids when air conditioning just wasn’t a thing, we had kept the window open overnight. As the morning became aware, I recorded no man-made cacophony of work and play; instead, it was only gentle and unhurried raindrops combined with light pressing against my eyelids in the form of lightning flashes. Summah stohms. But still, I know enough not to open my eyes yet because I’m still sleepy and prefer to gently take in the fact that this is my baseline of silence.

And even on the days where there is no storm, I love these first moments of wakefulness. The rare mornings where, as an adult, we can just lie there and listen without really realizing that we are listening to anything at all. 

Back in Rome, we have taken to re-appreciating Yusuf / Cat Stevens for no particular reason, other than that he remains an evergreen and peace-loving artist. His rendition of the Christian hymn, Morning Has Broken, is an obvious choice as we get the day started: 

If all of our mornings, regardless of where we are and what we believe could faithfully commence with our own understanding of silence, I wonder what kind of world we’d all have. The feeling I get is that we’d better appreciate the value of this experience and try hard to package it up and carry it along through the rest of the day. Starting each day with a steady foundation could help to keep the unavoidable noises of screen time, good and bad news, all of the other human requirements from sending us over the edge as we move from task to task. It’s a little funny, but I never imagined that being an adult would involve so many ridiculous things—but feeling as though I am outfitted with some sort of grounding anchor really does help me to deal with everything just a little bit better. 

I quickly grew accustomed to the louder than normal cicadas in Puglia. Once I developed a basic sense for where I was, and what the sound pattern consisted of, I easily incorporated their cacophony into a background of ease. And I focus on the morning in particular because this is the period where you hear these types of sounds best: the unremarkable beings around you, the natural flow of the sea, sand and trees. You are rewarded by crawling out of bed early to experience all of these things.

As we grow older and tend to move about with greater frequency, a fringe benefit of this modern experience is that we can develop deeper existential knowledge for more than just one place. We can both return home and understand what the small details mean—but at the same time, we recognize familiarity and feel fulfilled by what an alternative experience offers.  

I’d have to ask my elders explicitly about this, but I suspect that one of the best things about “slowing down” (using that term loosely) is that we have greater access to these times of silence. On the surface, it might not feel as though it adds up to much, but at the end of the day, it is one of the things that I am finding that I most look forward to.