Coronavirus Made the World Quieter - Now Listen to the Noise Inside your Head

Corona Made the Planet Less Noisy. Now we can hear Earthquakes.

You know that feeling when the air conditioner shuts off, and you didn’t even notice the noise was there in the first place? That just happened to the entire planet. Coronavirus has reduced the amount of noise in the world.

Humans are noisy creatures. We drive, drill, build, and fly across the planet, each one of these things creating vibrations and noise that impact the entire world. Scientists discovered that recent lockdowns reduced human-caused seismic activity and noise across the planet by half. From major cities to sparse forests, the world is quieter.

Scientists are calling this the “Quiet Period of 2020.” This means that we can better hear the seismic activity we’re trying to track all the time like earthquakes or volcanoes. In the quiet, we can better distinguish between the noises humans create and those caused by natural events. When the world got quiet, our global alarm system got better. It works the same way with you.

We say we want quiet, but are we ready to face the noise in our head?

A lot of us are in search of quiet in our lives. We seek it out for rest, concentration, or peace. The challenge is that in the presence of quiet, humans will generate our own noise, usually in the form of our thoughts. Like the air conditioner running that we don’t even notice, we have a near-constant stream of thoughts running through our heads. Grocery lists, self-criticism, fantasies, fear about the futures, regrets, daydreams. This noise is constantly running, and we often don’t notice it until things get quiet around us.

Hearing the noise in our heads is good for us, but we don’t usually like it. There are a million ways to avoid it: drinking, scrolling through social media, Netflix, overwork. My distraction of choice is staying busy. If I don’t stop moving, I’ll feel good about myself, and I won’t have to face what’s going on inside.

When we get quiet, it all comes to the surface. People who do long meditation retreats or periods of silence will recognize this. You sit in silence for days on end. Once your mind starts to quiet down, there it is, a thought you didn’t expect, or didn’t want to hear. You’re in a beautiful place or feeling calm and peaceful, and then from inside your mind comes the clanging noises: “I’ve always hated my sister.” “This job isn’t who I am.” “I never loved him.” “This has to stop.”

What will you hear in the quiet?

The quiet in our lives often tells us things that we try to ignore but will transform us. If we listen. People understand it by different names: the calling of God, intuition, our inner wisdom. We tend to think the most important news comes from loud things like big accomplishments, praise, and visible success. However, we often have to strain to hear what will change us the most. 

There’s a story in the Hebrew Scriptures about a man named Elijah. He’s in a major career transition, to say the least. He’s running for his life and so exhausted he doesn’t want to keep living. A voice tells him that if he goes up to a mountain, God will pass by. He encounters winds, earthquakes, and fire. But, the story says that God wasn’t in any of these noises. Eventually, he hears the sound of what the authors call “a gentle whisper,” or a “still, small voice.” He has to stretch his neck outside a cave to hear it. When he finally does hear God, he doesn’t get comfort or consolation. He gets a question. “What are you doing here?”

If you allow yourself to stop and experience quiet in your life, you might hear something you need to hear but don’t want to. If you stop moving and cut the distractions, chances are you’ll hear something like that question for yourself: “What are you doing here?

This is the time to listen to inner alarms. It could change everything.

This is a difficult time in the world, and also a quieter one. It is a perfect moment to listen to what the quiet has to tell us. The quiet in the world helps our alarm systems tell us where the danger is. This is a time to hear the alarms in your own head.

Many of our normal routines have had to stop or change. The way we work, how we learn, what we buy, how we feel safe, where we live and travel. This is the time to listen to messages that might be hard to hear. In the new routines, the new quiet, you might find out things you’ve been avoiding for a long time. You might hear alarms that are very real, alarms to keep you safe or help you grow. What will you hear? A change of heart? Different work? The need to forgive, or stand up for yourself? What you hear could change your life forever.