The sound of silence

Ding, ding, ding.

My mind is plagued by endless notifications. If I didn’t keep my phone on silent, I’d likely go insane. Or maybe I already have. Hard to say.

These days, silence is a rare phenomenon. And by silence, I don’t just mean the absence of sound—I mean the absence of constant external stimuli, the kind that gradually erodes our ability to self-sustain on our own thoughts.

Life itself now feels like one giant, flashing, breaking-news notification emoji. Silence? That’s like an outdated app no one uses anymore.

And when, by some glitch in the matrix, we get a moment of disconnection, our minds panic. Scrolling and browsing have become our default operating system. To simply sit in silence with ourselves feels unnatural. Like we’re going through some sort of withdrawal.

And in some ways, we are.

My Netflix account went down once. My wifi dropped. I paced like an addict between doses, waiting for the next hit. What could I possibly do with myself now? I stared at the wall, wondering …