Friends,

Last week I flew to Minneapolis with my wife and daughter.

They went to a sold-out concert at a 40,000-seat stadium.

I went to a room certified by Guinness World Records as the quietest place on Earth.

***

Being in the quietest place on Earth didn’t mean there were no sounds.

It meant there were no sounds other than me.

It was so quiet I could hear my joints shifting, my stomach gurgling, and each inhalation, exhalation, or eructation in crystalline detail.

These noises were not continuous, and each was almost instantly absorbed to nothingness by the surrounding baffling.

But between them there was never more than a 1–2-second break.

***

Breathing, blood flow, digestion, hair and nail growth, and every other form of cell destruction and repair are almost all autonomic—involuntary, unconscious—functions.

So is thinking.

I sat alone in total darkness for an hour, reclined in a lawn chair, not speaking.

But the inner chatter was constant.

Ideas for coaching.

Exercise plans.

Email edits.

Complaints, regrets, song lyrics, movie lines, and musings about what to have for dinner.

As with all the other noises from my body, there were gaps between my mental emissions, but none longer than one to two seconds.

At last—I could hear myself think!

Yet I hadn’t chosen these thoughts any more than I chose my heartbeat.

***

Imagine being trapped in a room with a blaring TV you don’t control that changes channels at random intervals.

That’s consciousness—or at least rumination.

The room is our mind.

The TV is our thoughts.

Except they’re not ours.

Just as we say My stomach rumbled, not I rumbled my stomach, we can say My mind thought, not I thought.

That’s my biggest takeaway from my hour in everything-but-me silence.

I don’t have to either suppress or identify with every thought my mind generates.

I can listen curiously, attentively, without attachment.

And when I do…I feel fresh, free—and frankly bemused.

Then the thoughts get quieter.

The gaps get longer.

Finally, I can hear silence.

And there is a stiller, stronger, calmer, and wiser me than I’d ever realized.

Hushed—

Jeremy