Turn Off the Noise. Light a Candle.

Do you yearn for the quiet? Not for the absence of people talking, but the absence of all noise? Perhaps it’s a bit antiquarian, but I think there’s something within us that can find absence to be healing.

What if the refrigerator stopped making its familiar whir, the AC unit span down, and every reminder of city and industry paused? If the cell phone was not there as an addiction to reach for, and every screen with their harsh blue lights would fade to black. If we could be truly at peace—not in a mythical way either, but in the manner that most people have experienced life throughout the vastness of human history.

Indulge in what feels like a guilty pleasure. Turn the phones off, light a candle or even an oil lamp, and travel back in time, not because history was perfect or because we don’t appreciate modern conveniences, but because we have souls. Sometimes, they need a break. We need to live as if we have them.

By candlelight, read something for pure pleasure, not for utility. Or pick up a real pen and write on physical paper, or simply sit before the flame and pray. Be connected with God in the silence, when you might at last hear Him.

It’s not just that our society is frenetic, but that it’s loud. It is demanding of our productivity, of our output for someone else’s ears. Even the time that people spend on social media, which they think of as pleasure, is merely the output of one’s opinions, tastes, or most sarcastic inner monologue for the entertainment of others.

The perceived need to be available, to everyone at every minute, demotes us from people with lives and loves to mere performers at the whim of the collective. The part that haunts is that there is no off switch. There is no hour wherein it is expected that people would think, or be at peace, or pray. We are wrapped in the frenzy of task-doing and task-preparation and availability for task-planning until bed when large swaths of the population toss and turn with frantic worry about tomorrow.

So if we are to live with the acknowledgement that we have souls, then intentionality is required. In a stroke of irony, we must plan for the peace. We must decide on the hour in which to light the candle. Take off the smart watch, turn off the phone or relocate it to another room, and get away from all electronics. Relearn what it is to feel and to think without being fed constant input—without being entertained. After all, we are both oppressor and oppressed in the culture of continual input, always creating and demanding more creation.

For those unfamiliar with the stillness, it can be jarring, as there’s an urge to reach for something to entertain us externally. It can feel physically uncomfortable. And therein we learn the vice that helps us to fill the noise: perhaps it’s the TV remote, where one can press a button and stare blankly, or maybe it’s the motion toward the computer so we can stare at YouTube in a similar manner. But if you sit with the silence, then contemplate that this would have been part of the typical experience prior to the Industrial Revolution. Born to a different time, what would your hobbies have been? What would you have read? Perhaps you would have prayed more, or loved better. Perhaps you would have written lengthy letters to family members across the country. Is it mere idealism to assert that you might have been more at peace?

It is not true that what is old is necessarily better, but it is the case that many of the goods of antiquity are still goods, and are worth reclaiming, if only from time to time. Before moving on to the next distraction, try lighting the candle.