The Value of Silence
THE
VALUE OF SILENCE
Mario
D’Couto
As someone who has been working in
the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) industry, interacting with customers is
my daily bread and butter and yet while work can take its toll as in the case
of back – to – back calls with no space to breath, when the time for avail does
come, a lot of my colleagues get into chit – chatter and gossip just as a means
to avoid boredom. This is not to say that having conversations or speaking with
others is a bad thing. We should interact with others and make time for it
since it helps to break the monotony and builds social connections. Yet what is
equally important is the content of our conversations. Perhaps a good way to
evaluate our conversation is to ask ourselves, is the conversation with the
other constructive or destructive? Does it build or destroy? If all our
conversation is going to be about one’s activities over the weekend or
gossiping about someone, I am not sure to what extent that is going to be
helpful. For all you know, such conversations can lead to stress, envy, anxiety
and jealousy. The purpose of this blogpost/reflection however is not so much
about an introspection into the nature of our conversations but an invitation
to think differently about silence because when we learn to cultivate silence,
we create more depth in our lives and that can lead to wholesome, fruitful conversations
through the exchange of ideas, thus leading to more productivity and finding
ways and means to deal with the various issues of life that it throws at us as
we tread along the path that we find ourselves in.
The French mathematician, physicist,
inventor, philosopher and Catholic writer, Blaise Pascal, wrote in his famous
work, ‘Pensees’ (meaning ‘Thoughts’) the following words, “All of
humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone”.
By this what Pascal was implying is that people are often unable to confront
their inner selves and the existential loneliness that comes with it, so they
fill their lives with busyness and distraction to avoid this discomfort. He saw
the constant need for external stimulation as a fundamental human flaw that
leads to unhappiness and prevents genuine thought and peace. Was he right in
saying that? Fast – forward to 29th August 1952 where the American
composer and music theorist, John Cage’s 4’33’ was performed at the Maverick
Concert Hall in Woodstock, New York. Basically 4’33’ is just plain silence without
a single note played on the piano. It is just marked by three movements by
opening and closing the lid of the piano while the audience was invited to
listen to the sounds around them. This may seem a bit extreme but perhaps this
is something that is much needed in our world that is marred by a plethora of
distractions.
It seems that Cage’s fascination
with silence began early in life. In 1928, in a speech contest for Los Angeles
High School, he tried to persuade his fellow students and the judges that America
should institute a national day of quiet. By observing silence, he told the
audience, they would finally be able to ‘hear what other people think’.
This seems to echo the words of the philosopher Zeno who said that we were
given two ears and one mouth for a reason, which perhaps was to indicate that we
were called to listen more than we speak. If we want to think better, we need
to seize such moments of quiet. If we want more revelation, more insights or
breakthroughs or new, big ideas, we have to create more room for them. We have
to step away from the comfort of noisy distractions and stimulations as the
Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher, Thomas Carlyle once said, “Thought
will not work except in silence”.
The fact of the matter is that God
didn’t design our minds to merely receive information. He created us to also
think and make creative connections between various inputs. But how can we make
those connections when our minds are filled with noise? Non – stop noise limits
our ability to cultivate depth not only at work but even in other areas of our
lives such as family, our prayer life and so on, thus thwarting our attempts to
be purposeful, present and productive. Each of us, therefore, needs to
cultivate those moments in our lives where we limit our inputs and turn down
the volume so that we can access a deeper awareness of what’s going on around
us. In shutting up, even if it is only for a short period, we can finally hear
what the world has been trying to tell us or what we have been trying to tell
ourselves. Such answers must be fished from the depths of our inner selves for
what is fishing but slowing down since fishing, by and large, is an activity
that requires time and patience. No one catches a fish by simply putting the
bait under water and expect to catch a fish immediately.
We can’t be afraid of silence, as it
has much to teach us. The ticking of the hands of your watch
is telling you how
time is passing away, never to return but we would only be able to hear and
understand it, when we have learned to cultivate that silence within. Even from
a creative standpoint, silence plays a vital role. It’s been said that C.S.
Lewis may have never written the Chronicles of Narnia had it not been for
boredom, which comes as a result of silence. Lewis grew up in the early 1990s
in the Irish countryside, where there wasn’t much to do, especially as the
Emerald Isle’s frequent rainy days as his biographers pointed out that Lewis
and his brother spent many hours, combating the boredom, making up their own
stories. With the kind of lives we live today, it seems as though boredom has
become nearly extinct with all the noise that we have allowed ourselves to be
surrounded with and that’s a problem because a lack of noise is essential to
creativity.
Noise limits our opportunities to be
bored and thus creative and if we don’t have the space to work out our
God-given gift of creativity, it will be far more difficult to be productive.
The choreographer Twyla Tharp gives us the following exercise which can be used
to convert our boredom and silence into fuel for creativity and productivity
which can be seen in the following words, “Sit alone in a room and let
your thoughts go wherever they will. Do this for one minute ….. Work up to ten
minutes a day of this mindless mental wandering. Then start paying attention to
your thoughts to see if a word or a goal materialize. If it doesn’t, extend the
exercise to eleven minutes, then twelve, then thirteen until you find the
length of time you need to ensure that something interesting will come to mind.
The Gaelic phrase for this state of mind is ‘quietness without loneliness’.”
If you invest the time and mental energy into this exercise, you will be able
to find solutions to the problems you face such as how to take your life
forward or maybe your business forward (if you have one) or how to make sense
of senseless violence and so on.
In this light, you may also want to
consider keeping your earphones or headphones aside because if you put on your
headphones or earphones every time you do something whether it is working,
walking, exercising, commuting or whatever that may be, your brain never gets
any quiet time. Even one album you have
listened to a million times still creates a bit of mental work. Your music,
podcast or audiobook prevents boredom but boredom creates space for thinking, focusing
and also creativity something which we have already seen. So take a break and
leave your earphones or headphones at home. Just listen to the sounds of
traffic or the clock of your keyboard or your footsteps on the pavement. Resist
the itch to fill the blank space. This is not say to give up your
headphones/earphones altogether. Rather it is about taking an occasional headphone
or earphone vacation for a day or just an hour to put some quiet time in your
day and give your brain a moment to recharge. Think of it as an intellectual
form of intermittent fasting wherein instead of fasting from food, you’re
fasting from all the noise and the distractions that make up your day.
If you are stepping out for a break
from your work, it would be greatly beneficial to not indulge in the infinity
pool of social media but rather to utilize that time for gazing out the window
(it’s good for your eyes) or going out for a walk (it’s good for your mind and
body) or grabbing a snack (it’s good for your energy if you are hungry) or
talking to someone (it’s usually good for your mood unless you talk to a jerk).
The good thing about this is that when you take up one or more of these
activities, you would notice that you have more energy and when you have more
energy, it is easier to get back into laser mode and sustain focus on your
highlight.
Lastly, from a spiritual standpoint, we cannot ignore the importance of silence since the noise of the modern world can and does make us deaf to the voice of God, something that we all need to listen from time to time. By filling our lives with noise, we are becoming like the ‘wicked man’ of Psalm 10:14 who ‘in all his thoughts’ has ‘no room for God’; we are inflicting ourselves with what Timothy Keller called ‘the torture of divine absence’.
