make my grandma proud

My grandma used to do this thing with all of her grandkids where we would go outside at night, onto her porch, and sit down with all the lights off. She lived out in the countryside in rural Illinois, so there was nothing and no one in sight. Then, my grandma would have us close our eyes and listen, . . . and we would keep sitting there, listening, me curled up in my grandma's robe, eyes closed, with her by my side, for a while.

Eventually, we would break the silence by discussing what noises and animals we heard, but usually, we'd end up repeating the process many times in a row. I was just following along with my grandma and loved every bit of it, but my grandma, she had a goal. She would always say that she had to hear something interesting. This is a really small thing, but in my opinion, my grandma lived a much fuller life by this simple behavior alone.

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I think we should all start taking after my grandma. It doesn't have to include going outside or even involve listening for sounds, but I think my grandma was really onto something by simply sitting in silence.

How often do we do nothing? We get bored and scroll on our phones or watch television or read books or listen to music, but we never let ourselves sit in silence and just exist, to just let ourselves be, instead of continuously feeding our thread of thoughts.

I think sitting in silence can allow us a different kind of rest than that which we get from digital entertainment or even books. While both of those are sources of escape, providing rest from thinking about work or school by replacing those thoughts with entertainment, they don't actually let our minds stop and rest.

It can also be grounding to sit in silence without reaching for one of our many distractions. It can feel weird, but I think that's the grounding feeling. I think we get so lost in all of our forms of entertainment that distract us from reality, so when we finally do feel grounded, it feels out of the norm; it feels off.

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When we sit in silence, we can slow down our thread of thoughts and ground ourselves. We can close our eyes and notice the world around us. It can allow us to make time, specifically, to just be a witness to life, to make time to step back from the blackhole of our own self and our own thoughts and to just be.

So tonight, go make my grandma proud, and sit in silence.