Enjoy the Silence

Some people do not know how to enjoy companionable silence, and therefore feel that every moment be filled with noise, or in this case, talking. I never appreciated the relative silence of my commute until today.

My truck was in the shop and I needed a ride to campus. Turns out I didn’t know just how much I enjoyed being quiet in the morning.

Most of the drive from my apartment to campus passed with me, sitting in the passenger seat, not saying much aside from the occasional directional instructions. The person giving me the ride, either out of social awkwardness or love of the sound of his own voice, talked, talked, and talked the whole way. About anything and everything.

A verbal vomiting of all thoughts that entered his head. I thought for a moment that perhaps his verbal vomiting was an effect of the cause, because I got sharp with him over his comment about the way I closed his car door. He muttered it under his breath, I took umbrage and then attacked. Regardless, silence would have been just as acceptable, and I would not have taken offense.

Maybe if I hadn’t been trying to give this hapless twit directions I wouldn’t have had to concentrate on what he was saying so I could utilize his pauses for breath to interject with the turn ahead, and I could have tuned him out.

The mental energy I spent during that morning ride was exhaustive and I found myself pining for my truck and the solitude of my usual commute by the time I got to class.

Silence, when used judiciously, makes me happy. Apparently, I need the silence to let my brain power up slowly on the way to class in the morning. Indeed, sometimes, like Depeche Mode says: words are very, unnecessary.