Silence isn’t empty. It’s the only time you can hear what’s been under the noise.

Quiet is not nothing, it is the condition under which other things become audible. Put the headphones away for twenty minutes and what arrives is not emptiness but a queue: the thing you have been avoiding, the person you owe a message, a sentence you have been carrying around. That is why people keep the noise on.

So expect the first part to be uncomfortable and go anyway. Walk somewhere with nothing playing, and let whatever surfaces surface rather than reaching for the phone. If something painful comes up, you do not have to solve it on the walk; noticing is already most of the work.