The Sound of Everything
What We Lose When There’s Never Silence
“Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy if I could say how much.”
— Much Ado About Nothing, Act 2, Scene 1
I don’t think we know what to do with true quiet anymore.
Even as I write this, I can hear it: the low rumble of a train in the distance, the steady whoosh of school buses braking in front of the house, the gentle tinkling of water from our indoor garden. It’s not unpleasant. But it’s there. Constant.
And in the background—if I were to measure it—there’s the hum of appliances, the faint buzz of an overhead light, maybe even the barely perceptible echo of an airplane somewhere overhead.
Acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton has studied silence for decades and says there are fewer than a dozen places in the U.S. where you can sit for 15 minutes without hearing human-generated noise. Globally, it’s even harder to find. The only locations where airplane noise doesn’t reach are in the most remote, deeply protected pockets of the Amazon rainforest.
We live, quite literally, surrounded by sound. And this isn’t new.
J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in the mid-twentieth century about the “roar of self-obstructive traffic” in Oxford. He mourned the way a factory chimney had somehow become more “real life” than an elm tree. He wasn’t just resisting industrialization. He was grieving the loss of stillness. He loved the trees—and felt the noise pressing in on them, and on us.
We fill silence with activity. We fill activity with productivity. Even our rest is often a performance—tracked, timed, optimized. The wellness industry tells us to meditate and breathe deeply, but sometimes turns that into one more thing to do, one more checkbox to tick off.
But what if silence doesn’t need to be filled? What if it’s already full?
Learning to Sit in the Quiet Again
But maybe it’s not just that we no longer live in quiet. Maybe we’ve forgotten how to respond to it.
There were once words that helped us name those moments—awe, rapture, reverence. Not as exaggeration, but as ordinary parts of the emotional vocabulary. Standing quietly in the presence of something beautiful was once considered a full, meaningful experience. It didn’t need narration or proof. It didn’t need to be shared.
Now, even relative quiet—like a moment of stillness in a visit, a slow afternoon, a pause in conversation—can feel awkward, almost like something is missing.
Maybe being constantly surrounded by noise hasn’t just made us overstimulated. Maybe it’s changed how we receive and express joy. Maybe it’s even distorted our sense of what counts as peace. The cost of overstimulation isn’t just burnout. It’s disconnection—from ourselves, from one another, and from the wonder that once arrived wordlessly.
The Power of Still Awe
Winnie the Pooh is showing up again . And, honestly, I didn’t expect him to be this much of a guide:
2) Part 2: https://www.storylinehealthnavigation.com/blog-1-1/pooh-amp-value-based-care-part-two
But the more I think about silence, stillness, and the discomfort we feel in doing nothing, the more his quiet wisdom surfaces. Doing “nothing” was never a waste. It was a way of being with the world. A kind of attentiveness that feels increasingly rare.
And watching my kids, I think they still know it. They’ll squat in the dirt and just watch a bug. Not record it. Not post it. Not even narrate it. Just—watch. They’re not bored. They’re mesmerized.
The most meaningful things, sometimes, don’t need to be said. A cozy home. A flower just beginning to open. A meal made slowly. The sacred silence between two people who know each other well. There’s a kind of joy that doesn’t announce itself. It just settles in.
What If Healthcare Made Room for That?
We don’t often associate medicine with stillness. But maybe we should.
The pause before a provider speaks.
The moment a patient sits, not being rushed to explain themselves.
The shared quiet of being human together.
At Storyline, we don’t always have the luxury of eliminating noise. But we do try to carve out space for what isn’t loud. For what doesn’t need translation. For what’s already whole.
We believe there’s wisdom in what goes unsaid. And strength in being still long enough to notice it.
