The sound of silence

It sounded ridiculously easy.
     I’ve been reading a book called “Life with Full Attention,” which is basically an eight-week course on how to live more mindfully, and part of the first chapter was about reducing outside input – the avalanche of emails, voice mails, telephone calls, news shows, elevator music and largely unsolicited stimuli that bombards us daily and that interferes with our ability to do anything with full attention.
     The book suggested that this week, the first of the course, I come up with a list of three things I could do to reduce such input and a couple of days ago I chose what I thought was the easiest one – not playing the radio to or from work for one day.
     But driving to work, I must have reached for the radio “on” button more than a dozen times without thinking. I was missing the news at the top of the hour. I wasn’t getting the weather report. I didn’t know how badly the Sox had lost most recently. I was almost twitchy with craving. I am a newswoman, after all. I have to know what’s happening.
     As if the world wouldn’t go on without my monitoring it. As if the falling tree wouldn’t make a noise unless I heard it.
     It was almost worse on the way home. There had been a murder in Burlington, the community next to the one my newspaper covers. Had they caught the guy?
     And there was a traffic jam up ahead. Without “traffic on the threes” given every 10 minute on my favorite news station, how would I know whether to search out another route?
     And yet… Without the distraction of the radio, I could concentrate on the different hues of spring green in the trees, on the species of bird that occasionally flitted overhead, even on my driving. I noticed other drivers, clouds, my own breathing.
     I felt calmer, more focused.
     Will I do it again?
     Maybe?
     But it won’t be easy.