Appreciating Silence - Is it Time to Unplug?

by Skip Cohen
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It's Hump Day, and a great time to make a point - I apologize if this sounds like a rant.

I'm tired of all the noise in our lives. At the risk of sounding like the old fart that I am, I miss limited access because I wasn't near a phone; spam calls trying to rip us off, emails from the Geek Squad or Amazon looking for approval of massive charges that don't exist, and we've just about given up watching the news. Fortunately, we record the news and can catch what we want in 10-15 minutes.

A few years back, our son got me into fly fishing. The image above was captured with one of my favorite older cameras, a LUMIX FZ1000, f2.8 @ 1/160 ISO 200. It was taken at a park near Helen, GA, and it was incredibly peaceful. Years later, looking at this photograph, I can still feel the silence and the joy of just casting—it didn't matter if I hooked a trout or not—the benefit was in the silence.

I shared the quote below last year, and it's perfect for what so many of us need now: silence.

"In silence, we can hear our intuition speak. But it can be difficult to find silence in the age of hyperconnectivity. We must find the time to unplug and create silence at least once a day...A change happens when we learn to access stillness...In stillness we find our balance." -- Emily Silva 

"Stillness" is such a foreign concept these days! Most of us get so busy we rarely search out silence until the damage from the "noise" in our lives is well underway. Find a moment today and kick back and chill. Walk away from everything and appreciate the silence.

​Happy Hump Day!