About 5 minutes ago, I sat in silence with 35 other people on a Zoom call.
This was part of Steve Chapman‘s ongoing anti-podcast, Sound of Silence, in which he shares two minutes of silence with a special guest.
It sounds like the worst thing you could listen to, but if you think that you’re wrong.
It’s actually the opposite.
There’s a real human connection that happens, and it’s very much like a meditative exercise.
We were paired up, three times, with a random person, so that we could also experience silence with someone on a one-to-one basis.
I had met all three of my pairings before, yet I don’t think we had ever previously shared silence.
It was anything but uncomfortable.
And it wasn’t as hard not to utter a word as I thought it might be.
I heard birds tweeting in the background.
Monastic silence in another.
The sounds of children playing, wood being mechanically sawn, coughs, sniffing, shuffling and cars whizzing past.
Yet between us, nothing passed.
Nothing audible, that is.
Something definitely passed between us, though.
A sense of connection.
A sense of shared experiences.
A sense of our humanity.
Thanks Steve.