And, if we are unwilling to practice the gift of contemplation and find time for solitude, we miss so much along the way. Admiral Byrd's journal is filled with the fruits that silence brings:

I took my daily walk at 4 p.m. today in -89 degrees of frost ... I paused to listen to the silence ... The day was dying, the night being born -- but with great peace. Here were imponderable processes and forces of the cosmos, harmonious and soundless. Harmony, that was it! That was what came out of the silence -- a gentle rhythm, the strain of a perfect chord, the music of the spheres...