Drives alone in my car are typically prime for jam sessions. Windows are down, speakers are shaking and all is right in the world. Over the summer, I had plenty of opportunities to disrupt pleasant neighborhoods with my admittedly angst-laden musical library by cruising down the suburban streets of my hometown. Sideways glances from my elderly neighbors rarely deterred me, sometimes even adding fuel to my pop punk fire.
Then, my Bluetooth speaker went kaput.
Driving a 2005 Pontiac leaves one with only a few options: the radio, six CDs or a speaker connected to your phone balancing gracefully in the cup holder. The local radio stations did not appeal to my taste, and I had listened to those same six CDs religiously since high school. The outlook seemed bleak.
It was in this moment that I decided to pull a Twenty One Pilots-style experiment to see just how crazy I could go by sitting in silence. No music, no talk radio, only the light hum of my modest little Pontiac and the omnipresent sound of my scattered thoughts would keep me company on my commute.
I am not usually one who is uncomfortable in silence. I don’t seek to fill it when conversation slumps. I think it can be great for independent thought, and subsequently better for the conversation in the long-run.Â
Because of this, I was unsure how I would respond to the death air. It was highly plausible that the noiselessness would go undisturbed for the duration of each trip.
Within mere minutes of my first quiet drive, something silly happened: I started talking. Not to anyone in particular, as I was alone, but I was narrating my thoughts conversationally, rather than internalizing them in brief fragments.
Crazy had thus been achieved, right? What a short experiment!
Turns out, it’s not an altogether uncommon phenomenon. According to an article published by Science Daily in 2012, most people will talk to themselves at some point throughout the week, many even doing so hourly. Taking comfort in the fact that I wasn’t completely off the rails, I dug a little deeper.
I found that speaking my thoughts made them whole. I was able to focus more on a topic when I uttered my ideas, rather than darting from one fleeting concept to the next as I often did mentally. Things I said made more sense because it was like I was trying to explain them to someone that did not understand. It was like fine-tuning an argument before a debate or practicing a speech before presenting it in front of a class, but with the relatively mundane, everyday thoughts I had while driving.
Certain words or phrases I applied to my thoughts gave me pause. Upon utterance, I recognized that they were ill-fitting to my sentiments, poorly connected to my other points, or just plain wrong. If you have ever said something and immediately regretted it, then you probably understand this with empathetic ease. It was as if I needed to hear certain ideas to realize they were stupid or miscalculated. Imagine how much better it is to realize that your argument is irrational in the solitary comfort of your driver’s seat, rather than when locked in a confrontation with another person. Â
I kept this up for a week. Every drive I made alone was kept in silence, and the benefits were seeping into the world outside my car. The conversations I was having with my friends and family were more meaningful and more productive. I was getting my points across easily, even eloquently. I was listening more closely to other people when they spoke because my own thoughts were less hurried, less distracting.
In hindsight, there was nothing special about being in my car without music that made me think better. It was the fact that I was left with nothing but my own mind to explore. Many of us pack our days with constant sound, listening to ourselves only between beats and banter. The benefits that focused inward thinking can have socially and personally are enough to convince me that it deserves a portion of my time on a regular basis. Carving out car trips as a time to be introspective meant that I had to confront my ideas in a designated chunk of the day, which is far more practical than writing down “me time” in my planner. It feels less forced when it happens on its own in my car than it would as another scheduled activity in my day.
While I do not plan to live a life of silent drives, I now recognize that there are far worse things than taking a break from NPR or pausing the latest album that has my attention. It can actually benefit me and the people crazy enough to talk to me if we embrace moments of silence.