Silence... But not really

I didn't get an exact assignment for this weeks find silences, so I decided to find my own silences. I debated between the obvious don't listen to music, but figured that wouldn't be so much of a challenge because I often find myself sitting in silence. I figured instead I would try to incorporate music into everything I do this shabbat and try to find a way to use that music and look inward at the same time. One of my dearest friends from back home is having a birthday coming up and I am not going to be able to make it to his birthday celebration. To call him a music genius would be an understatement. I have never met someone who knows so much about so many different types of musics from all over the world, and I thank him for a lot of the knowledge I have today about music. I decided that for his birthday instead of getting him a chachkie I would make him a mix that is a compilation of the top songs of 1984 (his birth year). Saturday evening after I got home from a night at a concert of Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. I decided to start searching music from 1984 and ended up listening to amazing music until 4 in the morning.

After all of that music I realized that I didn't spend a lot of the time focusing on the silence surrounding the music. So today I went for a jog around my neighborhood and decided to use that time for think about life. It was great to pick a pandora station I don't usually listen to and just tune out everything and focus on my inner silence. It reminded me a lot of a few of my good friends from college who are Deaf. I went to a university that has one of the largest deaf populations in the country so I often think about what it would be like to be deaf. This thought ran through my head throughout the entire job, from crossing the street, to pressing the code at my front gate and not being able to hear the sound that comes with each button I press. It took me three times to get the code right because I couldn't hear the buzzing sounds.

I really enjoyed this shabbat and so far every shabbat I have been "experimenting" I have really taken a moment to appreciate the Shabbat experience no matter what our assignment of the week has been.