The Tranquility of a Quiet Life

One thing that distracts us from leading a quiet life oftentimes, is the cacophony of our own thoughts. I realized this awhile ago during one of my first visits to Texas. As I was at home alone during the day, the immense silence started caving in on me. Most of us, I think, are not comfortable being left alone to our thoughts. We get discontent, irritable, and melancholic when all we have to listen to is our mind churning. There is a discipline the old Benedictine monks knew when they took vows of silence. It takes a certain level of maturity to enjoy one’s own company and learn the meaning of “pray continually,� when the Lord is the only one around. Filling our days with movement has the possibility of hindering us from developing a needful and helpful spiritual peace.

Another thing that keeps us from the quiet life is thinking that activity validates us or makes us important. Stress is almost like a merit badge in our present world. You ask someone how they are and they respond, “Busy! I’ve hardly had 10 minutes at home all week. How are you?� If you say, “Well, my life has been fairly quiet lately,� you might get an incredulous stare. Obviously, this person is thinking, if you’re not busy, you are either stupid, a burden on society, or just plain old lazy. Yes, being stupid or lazy would be sinning, but we shouldn’t involve ourselves in things just to avoid being thought so. Whatever happened to drinking lemonade and chatting with the neighbors? We run around too much as a society and this habit has turned our stress level into our worth level, which is wrong.

A third thing that keeps us from the quiet life is boredom. “What is there really to do at home anyway?� we think. This can be a danger especially to those who have been away from home and then returned, as they are used to constant motion, as I was when I first left school. It was hard to have the creativity and motivation necessary to be productive. We tend to define boredom as stillness of the body, when in actuality it is probably better thought of as stillness of the mind. It has been said that only boring people are ever bored. The world of books and imagination and the life inside a home is limitless. Always keeping busy is an ineffective antidote to boredom, because you are in danger of simply moving around with hidden atrophy going on behind the scenes.

There is nothing wrong with activity and service. In fact, we are commanded in the Bible to be diligent and industrious. However, activity for the sake of activity is bad. It leads us to possible confusion of doing and being and we may be at risk for determining our worth by what we produce. We are valuable because we are, not because we do. Before engaging in any activity, we should ask ourselves a few questions. Will this be keeping me from other, more important things? Am I doing this because I am not comfortable with silence? Am I trying to find worth in what I do? Am I just bored and avoiding the reality of my own shallowness of mind? Be deliberate in your schedule planning.
A quiet life does not preclude activity, motion, or noise. What it does preclude is letting our hearts be unsettled by chaos, both in our lives and in our minds. Covering up for a poor spiritual condition by goings on and runnings around will not pay off in the long run. Once we are at peace and our thoughts are tranquil, then we are in a position to be busy and still remain quiet.