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The Joy of Quiet

nytimes.com

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Re: The Joy of Quiet

#41
post #27

For those looking for ideas to break away, just try the St. James way in northern Spain(or any similar walking experience). You only walk, eat, rest. There is nothing else to do for a month(if you start from the Pyrenees). You sleep mostly in pilgrim hostels, or cheap hotels. You can start alone but surely will finish with at least 10-15 new friends (if you want to of course). Every day you´ll walk for 5 to 8 hours,…

I agree 100%. I too walked the Camino de Santiago, in 2009.

Probably the best thing I've ever done. I came back centred, happy, relaxed and motivated. I met great people, had great times (and trying times - like walking 40km, into a town with no spare beds, and then walking another 10km to the next town, to again find no beds) and really challenged myself.

Walking alone through those fields is something I'll never forget. Hours of walking brings about a meditative state, and inner quiet which is rare to find.

Start by yourself, this will bring you out of your comfort zone and you'll meet more new people.

It's a great metaphor for life - you meet people, you lose people, you say goodbye, you learn to rely on yourself.

I recommend it to anyone.

Re: The Joy of Quiet

#42

The more I disconnect from various information sources, the more I realize how utterly unnecessary they were to begin with. It started with quitting Facebook back in February. After going through a short withdrawal, I deeply appreciated the "silence" that came from not knowing every single thing about every single "friend" I had on there. These days, not having Facebook is just a minor inconvenience: sometimes I don'…

A phone has a "DND" mode? Genius! Can you do a write-up on how to get that set up? I have an iPhone and sometimes just keep it on airplane mode all day to get research done. This is a bad solution for people who really need to contact me though.

It's fairly straightforward:

http://m.cnet.com/news/how-to-set-up-do-not-disturb-on-ios-6...

Re: The Joy of Quiet

#43

recalling that it’s only by stepping briefly away from my wife and bosses and friends that I’ll have anything useful to bring to them. That is deeply true. I picked my 3 year old son up from school two weeks ago, and sat on a bench in a churchyard near the school. Normally we rush through there hurrying to a playdate or just giddy on scooters with friends. But this time we sat, ate a sandwich and stopped. I pointed o…

Did the same three weeks ago with the 7 year old. We watched a blue jay go from tree to tree, coming back to the same one several times. We walked around looking for him, waiting for him to sing. In the church ground where normally my son races about. It only lasted about 15 minutes, but it was very nice.

It's the 15 mins you will remember.

He, on the other hand, remembers Dad going all funny because of a bird. Parents !

:-)

Re: The Joy of Quiet

#44

If you travel, you may enjoy Iyer's Why We Travel story. "If a diploma can famously be a passport (to a journey through hard realism), a passport can be a diploma (for a crash course in cultural relativism). And the first lesson we learn on the road, whether we like it or not, is how provisional and provincial are the things we imagine to be universal." http://www.worldhum.com/features/travel-stories/why-we-trave...

Nice share, thank you.

Re: The Joy of Quiet

#45
To those who liked this article, I recommend Net Smart[0]. It eschews doing away with digital media altogether, acknowledging their unprecedented power, talks about the need for intention and focus when using the web and social media, and explains using basic literacies and mindfulness techniques to that end.

0. http://rheingold.com/netsmart/

Re: The Joy of Quiet

#46
This weekend I lost myself in the mountains of West Virginia on a whitewater rafting trip. The great thing about bouncing around class 5 rapids is that you have no time to think about anything but the present. The phrase "laser-like focus" is tossed around amongst the tech community, GTD folks, minimalists, etc., but I never knew what it actually felt like until I was on the water. Getting away from the computer for long periods of contemplative thinking is one of the best activities I've done for my mind in a lifetime.

If Iyer's ideas or my own experience resonate with you, I recommend checking out a copy of Hamlet's Blackberry: Building a Good Life in the Digital Age [1] from your local library.

1: http://www.amazon.com/Hamlets-BlackBerry-Building-Good-Digit...

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