The Power of Silence (Reflections on Writing)

(A post from the pandemic era)

I don’t have a TV and I seldom listen to the radio. Pandora and satellite car radio don’t interest me much anymore. If I watch a movie on my iPad, it is a conscious choice.

Once in a while I play music on my Bose while I iron shirts, but more often I do that and all my other chores in silence.

It is like when I was a young boy, a quiet only child, living in a silent household with my parents or staying with my grandparents. My head was full of thoughts, dreams and reflections.

My grandmother, who was born in 1900, had no toys at her house. She gave me paper and pencil and it was up to me to do something with them. She told me about how she used to play farm with pine cones for animals when she was little. There were different kinds in the park-like woods outside her house and I, too, played with them.

I have written almost a thousand blog posts. Sometimes after a significant clinical event or encounter, I make a note to myself to write about it. But more often, my days pass and their observations fade into some recesses of my mind. They don’t come back until I find myself in silence, doing manual tasks or sitting down, in bed or in my recliner, with the blank, white screen of my iPad in front of me.

Sir William Osler at his writing desk

Thoughts like, “what have I learned this week”, or “what has struck me about my work or the practice of medicine lately” make me bring back those fleeting moments I almost have forgotten.

I consume less and less and create more and more. The Internet nomenclature for people who do what I do is just that: Content Creator. Sometimes I write because something I read made me reflect or react, but mostly I draw from my own experiences.

I find that the more I write, the more ideas I get for what more to write about. Nothing I think or write about is totally new or earth shattering, but it serves a purpose for me in keeping me deeply conscious of what I do and who I am.

Knowing that others read my words is a great and humbling privilege that gives me more inspiration to keep trying to capture the essence of being a 68 year old, 41 year veteran family doctor in rural America.

From the silence in my life to all these published words, I am firmly present here on this plot of land, and I am out there, all over the world. How strange.