On a good day here, when my homework and commitments fall away, when balance and moderation reign — if only for a few moments — I can usually pause with relief and say to myself:

"I am not my Palm Pilot."

That's on a good day.

More often than not, something in my hand-held electronic organizer is just dying — with each meager beep — to steal my attention and send me off to my next class, my next meeting, my next rendezvous.

Don't get me wrong; I love this thinly-sliced sandwich of plastic and computer chips. It's my daily bread, if you will, providing me with that nourishment of our age: information.

Where to be, when to be there, what to do, how to do it, who to call and what to know — it's all here for the taking.

The problem is, there is so much here that silence rarely prevails, and stillness doesn't seem to make it through.

Oh, sure, I can turn off the beeps on the Palm, but then another sound will trickle in to draw me away. The radio, the car, the Web or the phone.

Even the lesser technological marvels — those living, breathing people we call friends down the hall — present distraction enough.

In living life to the fullest, especially at college with all its wonderful excesses, we forget to leave room for quiet, for the space along the edge of our lives that spells the difference between confusion and contentment.

It's easy to deny the importance of that space when deadlines and due dates and dramas intervene, but without it, we can find ourselves set adrift.

We will bob up into consciousness some day before we leave this place and wonder, Who grabbed hold of our controls while we weren't paying attention?

Maybe, before graduation day arrives we'll realize that in order to get the most out of college, we first need to get a little less.

Schedule time to be quiet and conscious.

Or better yet, don't schedule it, if you think it'll reek too much of extra obligations.

Surprise yourself. Sometimes the oldest and simplest activities foster insight that doesn't need to be willed into existence to emerge.

Set out to walk without planing a destination, without worrying where you'll end up.

Take the long way now, instead of the shortcut. Look about you, as if the place was just created. Listen as if you can't speak.

Pick a night to not get drunk. Remember that being in tune with your senses can be as great as not being fully alert.

Whatever else you're doing, turn off the music. I used to think it was bliss to have a CD player always within reach. But then the reality of background music hit me.

It's like spending your life in an elevator where the muzak doesn't stop.

If you're religious, pray. But not like you usually do and not out loud. Try to reflect on why you believe what you do, without worrying about putting it into words. Let the feeling of your faith come to you first.

None of these are new ways to be silent, nor are they the only ways, but they become fresh for me when I rediscover their importance, their ability to carve up slices of time outside of my noisy modern Palm-Pilot-outlined routine.

I don't envy those shadowy premodern citizens of the Good Old Days, when life was, to quote Hobbes, "nasty, brutish and short." But they probably knew more than me about being quiet, about how silence can produce great ideas and even greater peace.

And that's something ultimately no digital assistant can help me with.