2. The Silence

We tend to value things most that are rarest, most impermanent, most difficult to come by. Very few things are rarer, more impermanent or more difficult to come by than silence. For me, its therapeutic values are something I’d struggle to get by without and which have made my life eminently more livable.

Whenever I have thoughts to clear, or feel the onset of either a depressive or manic episode, I’ve found that the inner tends to mirror the outer: mental quietude and coping with some measure of equanimity, for me, have always been far more easily achieved in quiet places, preferably mountainous ones, than amidst the noise and distractions found at home or in the office. An ever-dwindling resource in our culture, silence is fast becoming the exclusive preserve of the outdoors – they are its last repository and asylum. For anyone seeking relief from the often excessive aural stimuli to which we are exposed in our society, therefore, the outdoors might be considered our sanctum sanctorum, the only place in which we might recover the ability to hear the whisperings of our own, internal, unique voice that are so often drowned out by the clamor and mental busyness experienced elsewhere.