Note:
A little longer quote for today: Some people hunger for silence and solitude, at least in theory. The Franciscan monastery in Washington, DC offers an opportunity to try it out a day at a time in a small purpose-built hermitage in 4 wooded acres on their city property. It doesn’t always play out as hoped. This gives one some things to think about if you find yourself imagining how great it would be to ‘get away from it all’ for a while. The source profiles 2 women who did short personal silent retreats, and summarizes their difficulties. Some extracts follow:

Quote:
“What do we complain about more these days than the tyranny of constant stimulation? Our attempts to tune out the outside world — the occasional radio-less drive to work, the concerted decision to leave the phone at home for a few hours — are often ineffectual. It has come to this: True solitude is such a rarity in our modern lives that we have to buy it — or, in this case, rent it for $70 a night.

“But it turns out solitude isn’t that simple. Although participation in silent retreats is on the rise, many of those preparing to spend time at the hermitage said they were so unaccustomed to unstructured time alone that they made to-do lists — then feared they were doing “solitude” wrong and scrapped them.

“What is silence? The absence of noise? Achieving inner peace? Knowing yourself? Being able to hover above your own thoughts and observe them without judgment? Halting the constant hunger for accomplishment in a society absorbed with getting ahead in measurable ways, with doing rather than being?

“Silence isn’t the end; it’s the means, experts say. And its absence from our culture isn’t a small thing.

“The challenges posed by silence are well-known to those who study and teach it. Some retreats encourage people to train — to refrain from checking their BlackBerrys for a few hours at a time before coming, for example. Others ease people into silence over a couple of days instead of all at once.”

Source: Boorstein, Michelle. “Silent retreats’ rising popularity poses a challenge: How to handle the quiet.” Washington Post 12 December 2012