The joy of silence

And the fact that this isn't really rocket science.

Hi, my name’s Michael, and I take black and white photos, and write about the importance of finding quieter spaces - places where you can recapture and show kindness to your mental health. For me, it’s through photography - but I suppose it could be anything, really.

The past few days have been an absolute avalanche of thoughts, interruptions, distractions, challenges, ups and downs, highs and lows - more than the normal ebb-and-flow of life. For some reason the past week has been a struggle to keep my thought life in check.

It’s actually not normally this bad. But, for some reason, my brain seems to be going through a season of acting like a petulant child, and screaming “Don’t want to”, or “no”, when I keep trying to re-orient my thinking onto things that are helpful and more focussed.

Saturday, though, was a good day. I made a decision to get everything done that I needed to do, and then just grab my camera gear and head out. I decided to head to a local woodland and just walk slowly in the sunshine. Taking it all in, letting it all wash over me, cleansing me - bathing me, in everything that nature had to offer me in that moment. These images are not from Saturday, but that’s because I haven’t edited them yet. Instead, they’re from a project I worked on 2-3 years ago, called ‘Grass’. But the point will be the same in the end.

I can remember getting out of the car, heading to the boot to grab my gear and I just stopped. I closed my eyes for a sec, and just listened as I took a few deep breaths in and out. Big belly breaths - the best kind. The nourishing kind. I just opened up to it all, then headed out.

I’m not sure I made many good images on Saturday, but that was not really the point. The intent was to just go out into the great wilds and switch off from everything else. I wanted to just give my brain a moment to breath and reset. I wanted to stop the world for a second, and just allow myself to remember what was important.

Over the years, I’ve learned (sometimes the hard way) that it’s just really really important to get quiet. I mean, REAL quiet. The world with all of its hurried ways, will extract every last ounce of energy and mental resource, if we let it. It will plunder our reserves, and not even say thank you afterwards. It will simply take, take, and then take a little more. I’ve learned that the most important thing I can do for my mind, is to go find a silent space and just let it all flow back out of me. It’s a form of healing, I’m sure, because I always feel better because of it.

Sometimes, I’ve done this and never even taken a photo. But I’ve never regretted going out and getting quiet.

"True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment." ~ William Penn

William Penn says that ‘True silence is the rest of the mind’, and I wholeheartedly agree. There is something about going out and finding those quieter spaces which are not just really good for us, but increasingly important.

The ‘Grass’ project was, I think, an ongoing effort to silence my thought life, which can sometimes be quite a busy place, like Oxford Circus during kicking-out time, or the turnstiles on match day. Sometimes it’s hard to find silence, but getting out is always a tonic.

Maybe the same can be said for you, or you’re trying to figure out how best to dampen down the noise? Go find a woodland, or a field, or somewhere like that. Go out, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and see how you get on!

Thanks, as always, for reading Quieter Spaces - it means more than you know. I hope that this has been helpful in some way, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.