Quiet

Time mom came rushing into room saying “get up, get up!”: 6:32, Time sprung out of bed: 6:32 and 30 seconds, Random fact that popped into head as matching socks were hurriedly yanked on: In 1792, Benjamin Banneker and Benjamin Rush suggested the blueprint for a United States Office of Peace
I like quiet. I like sitting and hearing little—only the beat of my heart, the scratch of my pencil. I feel at peace when I am still. When I am alone with myself and all surplus movement is put on hold, stored away. I think that once a day, people should just sit, cross-legged, close their eyes and breathe. We sometimes forget to breathe when there is so much to do and to see and to say and so little time. Sometimes, you can feel quiet, reach out and touch it. It is in the soft flicker of flames, the curls of genuine laughter, the patter of rain.
I walk through the halls at school and some days I am overwhelmed by the noise. The voices splicing and smashing and colliding in the air. So many words. So many conversations. What is it that we’re all so desperate to say? What is it that needs to be heard? Maybe it’s because in this country we have the freedom of speech that we’re all so inclined to talk, talk, talk. Maybe, in this age of video games and radio and iPods, people have forgotten how to be comfortable with silence. When can silence say as much as a bucketful of words? When can it say more?
I think of the conversations I’ve had today. The ones in class and at break and after school. I can’t remember much of them, just the general feeling: happy, sad, mad. I hardly know what it was people were trying to tell me in the pauses and the periods and the breaths, because I was so caught up in the words, words that escape me now.
I’ve come to realize that quiet, that gestures are just as meaningful as words, sometimes more. I’ve come to realize that silence is rare, that it’s like a blue moon, a shooting star, an eclipsed sun. I’ve come to realize that silence, like food and water and oxygen, is a necessity.