Imagine yourself riding along and listening to nature with your bare ears. You hear the birds chirping, the wind flowing, and the gravel rubbing against your tires. Then, suddenly, you find a solution to a question or problem you have been wrestling with for quite some time. We reach the “eureka.” If you ever have, you know how powerful that feeling is; if it’s not the case, the following lines will help you access your inner genius. This is the power of silence.

As you may be aware, silence has been part of spiritual practices for a long time. Picture a Christian praying on his bed or a Buddhist meditating; they both search for peace and wisdom. This is no simple coincidence because silence allows us to access ideas profound inside our souls. In psychology, this is access to the subconscious, where our dreams and desires lie. What if we could have easy access to this divine knowledge? You would know exactly what to do and when to do it. You would be following the rhythm of nature.

Today, people have lost this practice of silence, as we live in a world of constant distraction. From an economic point of view, this makes a lot of sense as your attention makes the big corporations money. This is the basis of limbic capitalism. They want you to consume mindlessly; I wish you to live mindfully. Just by walking on the streets, you will notice that most people, especially among younger generations, are either wearing earphones or headphones or staring down at their phones, not looking at where they are going. Some even do both at once. This is sad. We are making a generation of robots.

One interesting distraction is music because it can fully activate the brain while also being used to escape reality like a drug. Again, we have to be mindful of our habits. We must know why we engage in any behavior and its consequences. This is mindful living as opposed to an automatic existence.

If you learn to reconnect with yourself, you’ll probably find that you don’t even have fun doing activities detrimental to your health. You will find pleasure in sleeping well, eating healthily, and hydrating plentifully. You will become less material and care more for fewer things but more fundamental things.

I have a question: How many minutes do you spend in silence daily? If, like the majority, it's not a lot. While I understand you have a busy life, I am sure you have a few minutes to devote to a daily contemplative practice. Are you aware of your screen time? Again, silence is a great tool to propel you towards the life of your dreams. How can you arrive at your destination if you have no idea where you are going? Silence makes us think about the deep, sometimes uncomfortable, questions. As Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Silence gives us space for this examination, ensuring we choose the right path.

In history, many philosophers spent a significant amount of time walking in nature. At the time, they didn’t have access to earphones, so they had to listen to nature and their thoughts. Nietzche famously went for walks for up to six or eight hours at a time.[1] Kant had a rigorous routine. He would repeat it every day for forty years, which included walking in the afternoon.[2] These philosophers understood that silence had a positive impact on their mental clarity and their creativity.

For instance, a study by Imke Kirste (2013) published in Brain, Structure, and Function found that silence, in contrast to noise, leads to the development of new cells in the hippocampus, a region of the brain associated with memory and creativity. The research highlights that periods of silence, rather than passive noise like music, are conducive to cognitive growth, which can be linked to enhanced creativity.[3]

Over the silence itself, there is also evidence that silence in nature has an even more significant impact, as found in this study by Oppezzo and Schwartz (2014), published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, found that walking boosts creative thinking, with the effect being powerful when walking in natural environments. The researchers discovered that participants who walked in a natural setting rather than an indoor environment demonstrated greater divergent thinking, which is essential for creativity.[4]

Cycling allows us to do just that; by combining riding in silence and nature, we can enhance our creativity, which is a critical component of knowing what to do in our training regimen. This can explain why I am drawn towards gravel rather than road cycling, but it’s also simply my soul calling.

You might be challenged by the idea of riding in silence. One of your objections might be that riding would become boring. I would argue that if you start riding alone without music or data, and after enough time, you find it boring, it probably means that cycling is not part of your calling. For any behavioral change, I suggest starting with a thirty-day hiatus; this thirty-day period gives you clarity of mind to assess whether a habit serves you. When you are still engaging with the habit, taking a step back and being rational about it is much more challenging.

If cycling is for you, you will experience greater enjoyment in the sport. In that case, you enjoy the sport for itself, not only because you have friends to chat with but even less because you want to reach a certain level to impress others or make money. Sometimes, facing the truth can be challenging, but at the same time, it is liberating as you find out what you need to do, which can be more than you thought initially, which can be frightening but also gorgeous as it is the truth.

Your soul could just want another kind of cycling. Maybe you persevere on the road but are meant to ride gravel like me. Listen to the silence and find your calling.

Summary:

• Silence is an underappreciated practice in our society.
• Silence allows you to find questions and answers.
• Cycling in silence and nature increases our creativity and memory.
  
  

[1] Popova, Maria. “Nietzsche on Walking and Creativity.” The Marginalian, December 12, 2021. https://www.themarginalian.org/2021/12/12/nietzsche-walking/.

[2] Currey, Mason. Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. New York: Knopf, 2013.

[3] Imke Kirste et al., “Is Silence Golden? Effects of Auditory Stimuli and Their Absence on Adult Hippocampal Neurogenesis,” Brain, Structure, and Function 220, no. 2 (2015): 1221–1228. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-013-0679-3.

[4] Marily Oppezzo and Daniel L. Schwartz, “Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 40, no. 4 (2014): 1142–1152. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036577.