A few weeks ago, I decided to do something that sounded simple on paper: record one minute of the “quietest moment” I experienced each day for seven days.

Turns out, finding actual quiet is way harder than I expected. And also way more unsettling than it has any right to be.

Day one, I’m standing in my house at 3am (could not sleep, obviously), and I hit record on my field recorder expecting to capture… silence? Whatever that means? And instead I got: my refrigerator humming, a car delivering newspapers, the HVAC system kicking on, a dog barking in the distance, a plane overhead that I didn’t even consciously notice until I listened back.

Not a single second of actual quiet.

I live in a pretty quiet neighborhood. This isn’t downtown. This is residential Portland, notoriously chill. And yet, there’s literally no moment of true silence.

This broke my brain a little bit.

What Even Is Silence?

So I started researching this (because I can’t just experience things normally without turning them into a research project), and here’s what I learned: true silence doesn’t really exist in the way we think it does.

Even in the quietest places on Earth (anechoic chambers, remote wilderness areas), there’s always some sound. Your heartbeat. Your breathing. Blood moving through your veins. Joints creaking. Your nervous system firing. If you eliminate enough external sound, you start hearing your own body, and it’s extremely weird and kind of disturbing.

The “quietest place on Earth” is an anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories in Minnesota that measures negative decibels (which shouldn’t even be possible, because that’s quieter than the threshold of human hearing). People can’t stay in there for long because it’s so disorienting. You start hearing your internal organs. Your sense of balance gets messed up. Some people hallucinate.

Silence, actual silence, is basically intolerable to humans.

Which explains a lot about why we’re all constantly drowning ourselves in sound, honestly.

The Seven Days

Day 1: 3 am in my house. Recorded for 5 minutes to get a full minute of “quiet.” Heard: fridge, distant traffic, HVAC, dog, plane, my own breathing, my stomach digesting (gross). Quietest moment: a 3-second gap between car pass and HVAC kick-on. That’s it. Three seconds.

Day 2: Tryon Creek State Park at dawn, figured I’d actually get some nature silence. NOPE. Birds everywhere (gorgeous but loud), wind in trees, distant highway (Interstate-5 is apparently audible even deep in the park), planes overhead, someone’s dog barking half a mile away. Did get longer stretches of “natural quiet” between sounds, but never actual silence.

Day 3: Tried a meditation center during their silent sitting time. Other people breathing, clothes rustling, someone’s stomach growling, the building settling, outside traffic, and construction two blocks away. The meditation teacher kept saying “rest in the silence,” and I’m like… what silence, my friend? What silence??

Day 4: My car, parked in an empty lot at night with the engine off. Closer! But still: my own breathing, the car cooling down (engines make all these little clicks and pops), distant train, wind, my heartbeat (I could actually hear my heartbeat). Recorded that for like 10 minutes. Kinda cool, also kinda creepy.

Day 5: I recorded myself sleeping. HUGE MISTAKE.

Day 6: Gave up on finding external silence, tried earplugs plus headphones. This was the closest I got to actual quiet, but I could still hear my breathing amplified, my jaw moving, my neck creaking when I turned my head, and this weird high-pitched tone that might be my nervous system.

Day 7: Just sat in my regular living room at a regular afternoon time and tried to hear the quiet between sounds. Honestly? This was the most peaceful one, not because it was silent (it wasn’t), but because I stopped trying to find silence and started just listening to the actual soundscape without judgment.

What This Whole Thing Taught Me

One: We literally live in a world where silence no longer exists in most places. The baseline ambient sound level is just… always there. Traffic, planes, electrical hum, machinery, human activity. It never stops.

Two: We’ve completely lost our tolerance for quiet. Even when I found relatively quiet moments, they made me uncomfortable. I wanted to fill them with something. My brain kept trying to generate sound (anyone else mentally play songs on loop when it’s quiet??).

Three: Maybe the goal isn’t actually silence. Maybe it’s just… softer soundscapes? More natural sounds? Less mechanical drone?

The Anechoic Chamber Experience (Bucket List Item?)

After this week, I became mildly obsessed with the idea of experiencing one of those super-quiet anechoic chambers. There are a few in the US that occasionally do public tours.

I want to know what it feels like to hear my own body that clearly. I want to know if I’d hallucinate. I want to know whether I could handle more than 10 minutes or if I’d tap out, as many people do.

I also suspect it would be absolutely terrifying, and I’d hate every second of it, but I still want to try.

This is what my life has become: actively seeking out uncomfortable acoustic experiences for… science? Personal growth? Content? Who knows at this point?

Why We Need Some Silence (Even Though It Doesn’t Exist)

Here’s the thing, though, even though true silence is basically impossible and kind of horrible when you do find it, we still need quiet.

Our brains need breaks from constant acoustic stimulation. Our nervous systems need moments of lower sound levels to reset. We need spaces where the soundscape isn’t demanding our attention every single second.

This doesn’t mean we need actual silence. It means we need environments where sound levels are low enough that we can hear subtle things. Where our auditory system can relax rather than remain constantly activated.

Natural quiet (the sound of wind, birds, and water without mechanical overlay) is genuinely restorative. Research shows it reduces stress, improves focus, and supports mental health.

But we’re losing access to it. Even in wilderness areas, there’s almost always some human-generated sound now.

The Recommendation

Try this yourself. Just for fun. Try to find one minute of actual quiet in your daily life. Record it if you can, or just pay attention.

I bet you’ll be surprised by how hard it is to find.

I bet you’ll also be surprised by how much sound is constantly present that you’ve learned to tune out.

And maybe, like me, you’ll start thinking differently about what “quiet” means and why we need it.

Or maybe you’ll just confirm that silence is overrated and we should all embrace the constant sonic chaos of modern life. That’s valid too.

What’s the quietest place you’ve ever been? And do you find silence peaceful or unsettling? I genuinely can’t decide where I land on this.