Wild Silence

Seeking Solace in the Age of the Digital Din

Photo by Matt Briney on Unsplash

“Simplify, simplify.”

—Henrey David Thoreau, Walden

Thoreau’s celebrated urging has become a modern necessity. Now more than ever, we must fight to preserve our consciousness, and the health of our psyche.

To survive the multi-track digital world that never ceases—never allows us a moment of rest—we must develop the ability to simplify in order to maintain physical and emotional well-being. Some aspects of our ever-hurried life must be slowed, or the pace will kill us. The wider the web, the less we stop to take in the horizon. Our mind, our body, and our spirit require that solace that stillness brings in order to regulate our mental and physical health.

When we give our focus to something, it is as though we are plugging our mind into it; we zero in and all else fades away. When we give our focus to the digital streams of work and media, we are plugging our minds into something draining, chaotic, and usually empty. And so we suffer mental fatigue after pr…