The Best Noise Cancelling
A few weeks ago, I was on vacation with my wife and kids. For a week, we stayed in a collegue's small bungalow next to a wonderful lake. For most of our stay, the weather was perfect — as if we had cashed in a few vouchers at once with the universe: The days were sunny and warm, and at night, I got more than one opportunity to sit on the porch and watch a thunderstorm do it's beautiful thing.
One of those days, between long hours splashing around in that lake and having fun times in the small house, the four of us took a stroll around a portion of the lake. We inspected suspicious holes in the ground, tried to team-hug a giant tree and ate wild fruit from trees. A few minutes into our walk, the kids took off with their bikes, my wife on their heels — and suddenly, I was alone. One moment, I heard my kids yell and my wife laugh, and the next moment, there was nothing but nature's version of silence. To my left, the lake gently splashed against tree branches and fallen tree trunks on the water line; everywhere else around me, there was only trees, their leaves rustling in the wind like a whispering choir.
The effect was staggering: As if someone found and pressed the active noise cancelling button for my brain, I was suddenly not only surrounded by, but also filled with the most inspiring, contemplative almost-silence. It was not perfectly quiet — but it was perfectly still. Something in my mind unclenched, and I instantly felt more like myself, as if a whole area of my brain was suddenly fully supplied with oxygen for the first time in forever.
One of my favorite thinkers, the philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris, is a great proponent of meditation. He ofter talks about how taking certain psychedelics can give you a powerful first impression of what your mind is capable of and what states of mind are, at least in principle, available. My few minutes at the lake, I would argue, have had a similar effect on me. I now have a vivid memory, a kind of bodily snapshot, of what real tranquility feels like. And I can't wait to get into that zone again — maybe with a coffee or a notebook or both at hand, and hopefully for much longer than just a few minutes.
