This is not a contradiction: moments of loneliness, silence and disconnection are necessary to motivate our vital impulse with more authenticity, it is like pressing a reset button where each piece corresponds with more meaning, where we find mental clarity to better understand people, put filters, to set priorities and personal goals.
Miles Davis was one of the most famous jazz trumpeters and composers in history. Once, when young musicians asked him for advice on how to achieve his level of mastery and originality, Davis gave them an answer they would never forget: “If there were no silences, music would not be what it is. “
- He also told them that life is like a score.
- Where one can find rhythm by combining moments of activity with moments of solitude.
- Silence and reflection.
- Only then can we find the inspiration and melody that lurks within us.
- Which we could not otherwise.
- Hear.
This is undoubtedly logical and obvious advice. However logical, however logical it may seem, we do not always implement it effectively, in today’s world, however curious it may seem, there is a greater degree of camouflaged and sometimes pathological loneliness, which we do not always hear about.
We mean the one in which one disappears in hyperactivity (in search of false hyperproductivity) and hyperstimulation, we spend the day working, connected to technology, doing things, achieving goals, satisfying others, wrapped in the noise of our cities. , this incessant rumor and unstoppable activity does not always deserve the concerns that generate us or the time it robs us.
Add to this the fact that sometimes our relationships bring us more loneliness than happiness, will we understand why depression rates and other health problems increase every year that we cannot neglect?
First, we must highlight an important fact. Loneliness that benefits us and returns to our physical and psychological health is the one that combines moments of solitude and isolation with the subsequent connection with the world, with its sound, shape, colors and sensory riches and, above all, with social sense. relationships, whether with friends, with the couple, with family. , with colleagues?
Human beings are not prepared to live in total and permanent isolation, an impressive example is undoubtedly the anechoic room of Orfield Laboratories in Minneapolis, USA, a space where several companies study the sound of their products: phones, motorcycles, washing machines?It is an ultra quiet room where 99. 99% of the noise is absorbed by the walls of steel and fiberglass, and where many psychological experiments are usually performed.
In this space stillness is so extreme that it is common to hear the sounds of the heart or our own blood circulation, something for which the brain is not prepared, something that goes against our nature, our genetic programming: after all, we are social beings that need to connect with their nearest environment, and when we have no stimulus , we’re just panicking.
On the other hand, while total isolation affects our psychological balance, occasional and limited-time isolation benefits you. Scientists tell us that moments of loneliness well distributed throughout the day are like “electric shocks. “Capable of reviving us, of allowing us to recover energy, meaning and inspiration.
We live in a society that loves independence, but is nevertheless increasingly alienated, outdated and accelerated. The advancement of new technologies allows us to be more connected than ever before. Our cities are becoming more and more overcrowded. In addition, we are increasingly surrounded by artificial light, we are less physically active because we have the opportunity to do many things without asking for more heart rate.
Doctors, neurologists and psychologists tell us that our brains are?Very different from how they connected 100 years ago, we received so many stimuli throughout the day and on so many fronts that it is almost?Vital? Let’s handle this sensory chaos a little better. We need calm, we need silence and loneliness from time to time to integrate this whole chain of information. The goal is to make sense.
However, there are those who do not know and, worse, there are those who feel an almost atavic fear of spending a day with themselves in solitude to speak, to think. This encounter can be almost as frightening as spending half an hour in the anechoic chamber of Orfield Laboratories.
Because just like in this space, you can hear the sounds of your own body, moments of loneliness in more comfortable places can bring the emptiness of your own being, fears, anxieties, knots of pending problems and the nudity of an unrecognized misfortune.