My Experiments with Silence: The Diary Of-An-Introvert

Book excerpt: Most of us are slaves to what has been described as the monkey mind. Driven by the illusion of unrealistic dreams and expectations, and the need for external validation, we are constantly caught in a tug-of-war between our inner life and the external universe. Samir Soni too has spent a lifetime oscillating between these two worlds, agonizing over the golden mean to strive for. He found it by experimenting with silence, turning to his diary as a companion in this journey, and finding the comfort in his inner self that the world outside could never provide. In My Experiments with Silence, the actor lays bare selections from his diary to help the reader cope with questions that have agitated the human mind for aeons. Who am I? Why am I the way I am? Can I truly change myself? In the process he underlines that until you discover the ‘real’ you, you are actually living someone else’s life, fulfilling someone else’s dreams, which were sold to you by the society at large. His engagement with the process of self-realization, the pitfalls and agonies that we open ourselves up to, the constant struggle between hope and despair provide a roadmap to everyone who has decided to undertake this arduous journey to one’s inner self.