ACCORDING TO AUBREY: The Cost of Constant

Where do you have time to think? Not just to process information, but to sit with yourself until it gets uncomfortable?

Is it when you finally turn your phone off before bed, or when your music won’t connect to your car radio? What about when there isn’t service at dinner or social gatherings?

Most of us don’t allow ourselves to have time to think.

Silence used to be a relaxing and underwhelming blanket of calmness.

Now, we treat silence like a threat, plugging every quiet moment with a podcast, a scroll, or a TV in the background. 

And then at night, when the lights go out, and the digital distractions are finally put away, the thoughts we’ve been outrunning all day finally catch up to us. 

People love music. 

I listen to music every single day. And for the past couple of years, I have made it my mission to get as many “minutes of listening” as possible before my Spotify Wrapped comes out at the end of the year. 

It turned into an addiction and a defense against intrusive thoughts, not just for the enjoyment of listening to my favorite songs. 

Small talk has become exhausting. Social interaction can become awkward and underwhelming, so to prevent that, scrolling on our phones is our defense.  

We crave predictable noise because it is less stressful than silence. 

According to psychologist Dr. Michele Leno, we have become conditioned to constant stimulation. As she notes, ‘The lack of external noise creates an echo chamber for internal doubts, leading to spirals of overthinking.”

It’s why we reach for our phones before the elevator door even closes, or why we’ve become experts at ‘toilet scrolling’ just to avoid three minutes of our own thoughts.

But the reality is, we aren’t supposed to “fix” silence. It is not something that is supposed to go away. 

Scientific research suggests that silence is a chemical reset for our brains. We need silence now and then. 

We can lose a lot of our lives and great experiences to being hostages to technology and constant stimulation. There needs to be a new trend in letting yourself be bored; it fuels productivity. 

The next time you find yourself watching your phone during a movie, checking your notifications at a social gathering, or panicking when your Bluetooth won’t pair, ask yourself: What am I so afraid of hearing?