A Fred Rogers reminder for today

[Bucky]

I don’t think we give that gift anymore (the gift of silence). I’m very concerned that our society is much more interested in information than wonder. In noise, rather than silence…How do we encourage reflection?

Oh my, this is a noisy world. I get up every morning at least by 5AM. I have a couple hours of quiet time, reflect about what it is important. What can we do, to encourage people to have more quiet in their lives, more silence? Real revelation comes through silence.

-- Fred Rogers

[spanone]

1. K&R

[OneGrassRoot]

2. K&R and thank you! n/t

[Journeyman]

3. "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." . . .

~ French philosopher Blaise Pascal

[NullTuples]

13. Perhaps we've become an overcrowded species that favors extroverts & high sensory thresholds.

[in2herbs]

4. For more than thirty years I have gotten up in the dark and gone out to my horses. I revel in

this time because the general population is still in bed and I use it to reflect on the past, future and the now. I now live alone and don't find the silence disturbing at all. I tend to stay away from people/friends who are not comfortable in their own silence and quietitude. Some people refer to this as becoming a hermit but they just don't understand the value of silence.

[Stuart G]

5. K & R....Silence & Gratitude For Each Day.

[Tommy Carcetti]

6. Last week I was swimming in one of Florida's natural springs

And on the surface you hear lots of people talking, splashing, playing about. All the normal sounds of the world.

However if you’ve ever been to a spring, in the middle there’s an area that is a lot deeper than the rest of the swimming area, a cave like area where the water “springs” out of the ground.

And I would go to the middle and swim about 10-15 feet underwater, and all the sounds that you could hear above ground suddenly disappeared.

And the only thing I was left with?

Silence.

Absolute pure silence.

I didn’t hear anything, except my own self.

It was a sublime experience, even if it only lasted for a few seconds.

[evolves]

9. Scub a diving is much like that--

all that you can hear is your own breathing. It's wonderful.

[NullTuples]

12. Fish: why are humans so LOUD when they come down here?

[plimsoll]

7. Sounds like a Friend.

[world wide wally]

8. One of the most wondrous things I have ever heard is the sound of snow melting.

Everything else was in total silence to make that possible.

[evolves]

10. My favorite thing about snow

is the deep quiet that accompanies it. I have also heard it melting, and absolutely agree that it is wondrous.

[NullTuples]

11. Fred Rogers, patron saint of our family

We're a family of autistics & all of us have sound & other sensory sensitivities. My spouse & I met and fell in love in school because we both gravitated toward the quieter parts of campus & ended up going on walks together in the park to get away from the surrounding loudness of the city.

I posit that some people - most people in our society today, perhaps - simply have much higher lower and upper thresholds before they notice stimulus and get overwhelmed. So for them, bright sun + loud, packed crowds + loud music is still comfortable. More so, it makes them feel safe as they can "feel" the group of people around them. They enjoy movies with loud explosions and jump scares. In-your-face advertising. Political & religious rhetoric that is so extremist and antagonistic, they can feel it. And feeling is good, so they enjoy it and crave more. Everything has to be over the top for them to perceive it - from my point of view.

Somewhere at my elderly mother's home, in the house I grew up in, carefully stored away is a signed photo of Rogers. I'd written him a letter when I was in kindergarten & he wrote back.

[vanlassie]

15. What a treasure!

❤️🚃❤️

[blueinredohio]

14. I thought I was the only person who loves silence.

[Kali]

16. I know people that can't be alone

for even an hour without some kind of stimulus or contact. I feel kind of the opposite. I'm not particularly introspective but the business, noise, lack of observation of things around them is so different to me.

[calimary]

17. For me it as all those years of broadcasting where you avoided the dreaded "dead air".

OY! If there was more than a moment of silence, somebody would come bursting through the studio door to see if something bad had happened!