Kinds of Silences

Often I was told that I was a too much of a talker, along with the saying of ‘silence is gold’. I refuse to agree with it. Not necessarily. Sometimes silences are much louder than actual words and I would say that you need to pay attention to what kinds of silences they are.

There are three kinds of silences. The first is the silence of escape. In this kind of silence, people refuse to be involved in a relationship that’s tricky for them by keeping the silence. I would call this rather ‘irresponsible’. When they need to make a communal decision, they escape the responsibility by keeping the silence, gracefully smiling. By the time when the ‘judgement(?)’ has arrived, they keep the same stance, and that silences turns into the second kind of silence, the silence of condemnation or blame.

I would call this kind of silence the loudest one. They actively wants others to know that they are not happy with them by actively refusing to communicate. In this way, they clearly deliver their message, which is often anger, but at the same time they make sure they do not receive any from others. This is no better than yelling. This is the loudest and the most violent one.

Conversation is about ‘relationship’, keeping the energy flow going between people. I think most of the misunderstanding of ‘talking’ is because of the wrong belief that words could deliver everything. That is wrong. Words are limited, but quite often they do have powers. That’s what magicians do at the final phase of their magic, they speak the spell! I do agree with Wittgenstein’s comments on silences; ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent’. This can be led to the third kind of silence, but before saying that, I’d like to point out it’s totally depend on individual’s choice. You can choose to keep the silence, or not. For some people, it can be a way of showing their affection and care to keep talking. In this way, they probably won’t be able to ‘solve’ the problem, but at least could be ‘with’ someone, ‘inside’ the relationship.

So this is the third kind of silence; the silence of love. There are times that you can’t find the right words to express yourself. Or the words seem so small compared to the size of your feelings. At first, this kind of silence happens naturally, but soon after, the ‘talker’ would try to keep the silence voluntarily. It’s because once they speak, it will become trivial. That is one of the powers that words have, making things look smaller than they are. This kind of silence is very talkative, as anybody will notice that this silence is filled with a lot of things that’s more than words.

Here, I’d say what matters more is not that matter of keeping the silence or talking. It’s the matter of understanding the intention of mine and the others, and making sure that my intention is reached to the receiver safely enough. Well, yes, sometimes, silence might be the gold, but for sure, what’s more precious than gold is to speak and listen ‘with hearts’. That is my excuse for my too much talking.