Adam didn’t know how good he had it.

There he was in the Garden of Eden, with the trees, pleasing to the eye and good for food. He had the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. Most of all, he had peace and quiet.

Ever since God introduced Eve into his life, there’s been no peace and quiet. Ever since, we’ve all pursued different ways to find peace and quiet.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of God’s feminine creation. They truly are the fairer sex. They also bring onto us children, which is really when the peace and quiet disappears.

I lived by myself for nearly a decade before I got married. While it truly was a lonely existence, the one benefit was the silence that came whenever you decided there needed to be silence.

Now I’m happily married with four children at home, and I’m desperately in search of silence, no matter how fleeting.

One year for a gift, my children gave me a box of earplugs for Father’s Day, marked “peace and quiet.” Another year for Christmas, they gave me noise-canceling earmuffs. My wife gifted me massages several times, which I probably appreciated as much for the 60 minutes of quiet as for untangling the knots in my back.

They all fall short of true peace and quiet, though, so we continue to look. I moved my home office, where I usually write these columns, into a far back corner of our basement in hopes of finding it. I’ll sit quietly on a closed commode in the bathroom, too, in search of a moment to myself. In either instance, I’m usually found by one of my girls within 10 minutes and coaxed back into the carnival that is our lives.

When my wife suggested we take a day off work together and try something quiet and relaxing, she didn’t have to ask me twice. Peace and quiet is my white whale, after all. That’s how I ended up “floating” for an hour near Toledo.

I’d never heard of this before, but apparently it’s a thing to put a bunch of salt (1,000 pounds, they claim) into a pod filled with water, about 10 inches deep. With so much salt in so little water, it makes your body feel extremely buoyant, as you float atop the water with minimal effort.

Then you lay there, with a soft colored LED light showing you the way for an hour in an enclosed capsule that’s roughly four times the size of your body.

The instructional video suggests you count the number of your breaths or meditate on something. I said a handful of “Hail Mary” prayers. Mostly I meditated on how long that hour might last and how loud the music that played with five minutes remaining might be. (The answer to that last one is it’s a lot louder than I expected, and it surely would’ve woke me if I ever fell asleep.)

I found myself incredibly bored and occasionally worried about drowning in 10 inches of water. I didn’t feel much relief from the tension in my neck and back.

My wife, on the other hand, loved her hour. She and said it relaxed her aches and pains more than she could ever expect. She claims to have extra mobility and stamina from it.

I will give my floating experience a thumbs up on one count: It was definitely an hour of peace and quiet, and I’ll take that anywhere I can find it, even floating atop 10 inches of salty water.

David Trinko is managing editor of The Lima News, a division of AIM Media Midwest.