The mystical beauty of silence

There is a potent power in silence; an implicit acceptance of the uncertain and a compulsion to listen to the voice within.

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“Silence is frightening, an intimation of the end, the graveyard of fixed identities. Real silence puts any present understanding to shame; orphans us from certainty; leads us beyond the well-known and accepted reality and confronts us with the unknown and previously unacceptable conversation about to break in upon our lives”

-Susan Sontag, Consolations

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By: Leonid Afremov

I recently embarked on a jaunt down memory-lane, peering into my now old, yellowed and dog-eared, high school report card. There was a printed statement from my Economics teacher that piqued my interest: “he needs to speak more and contribute to class discussions as he is one of the quieter ones”. To be brutally honest, I found the remark more annoying than nostalgic. There it was; that curious disenchantment with any form of silence or measured reservedness.

There seems to be a palpable unease typically associated with silence. For example, in any group social interaction, there is an unspoken expectation that only through conversation, no matter how painfully trivial, can one be or appear to be, engaged with the topic of discussion. We’ve become so accustomed to over-compensate in moments of silence because we feel that every conversational void/lull needs filling. Perhaps it’s the social programming we’ve arduously endured since childhood; institutional and educational arrangements that encourage us to embrace our voice because if you don’t speak, you remain invisible and disengaged. Or worse still, you are betraying your sacred right to speak freely, a fundamental provision of democracy.

But, in valorising voice, we’ve inadvertently suppressed the joy and potency that comes with remaining silent.

The more we are tasked with speaking, the more difficult it becomes to hear the hum of the world within and feel its magmatic churns of self-knowledge. The late American author, Ursula K. Le Guin once famously wrote, “Who knows doesn’t talk. Who talks doesn’t know,” in her superb poetic translation of the Tao te Ching.

Because, as paradoxical as this may sound, only through silence, no matter how fleeting, can we fully realise and take-in our own subjectivity. Often the answers to our external challenges, dilemmas, conundrums reside within rather than in a snippet of conversational exchange or text. Our search for clarity, over any of life’s seemingly delicate issues, begins and ends through calm introspection. External variables may affect our perception and experience of reality, but rarely does it offer the sagely advice of your own conscience. The vocabulary of your own reality lies in the stillness of your inner quiet.

Sure, a therapist may provide you with a venting ground or cathartic space but ultimately the ‘talking cure’ is, rather ironically, also a prescription for silence; to calm the incessant chatter of the mind and dig deep within not for an answer, but for the ability to accept a given circumstance.

By: Shuttershock

I’m not saying that speaking or being particularly affable is necessarily negative. That would be unreasonable. But too often, we use it as a device to paper over our own unwillingness to confront the source of our mental disquiet. Being overtly rambunctious insulates us from confronting the present moment in all its entirety.

It takes a certain courage to be silent especially in a hyper-mediated environment of Instagram likes, Tinder swipes and Tik-Tok dance routines.

Social media has placed a caricatured significance on the idea of ‘having a voice', to the point of exaggerating its actual impact, all at the behest of finely tuned algorithms. Platforms like Twitter, provide us with a neat excuse to gloss over nuanced debate and reach for that low-hanging fruit; clear-cut arguments that presumably provide convincing explanations of reality. Why? Because a neat argument allows us to blend in with the palette of hues that dominate mainstream views and identities. Most significantly, it offers an escape route from having to understand an issue for what it is, on its own independent uncertain terms through ones’ own frame of consciousness.

Silence offers a way back into reality and it is for many, including me, a scary proposition to digest.

There are obviously many scales to the expression of silence; from a casual luncheon with work colleagues to a nation’s silence on an issue at an international conference. Disregarding public and societal assessments of silence, choosing to not speak provides one with the space required to process life and its various shades with measured composure.

From my own personal life, as a husband, father, academic and writer, silence has unarguably allowed me to confront notions of self-doubt. It has given me the freedom to consciously stop myself in the tracks and reassess my life in relation to people and things that matter to me over and above what society thinks or wants me to think. Rather than seek external self-validation, I found it more affirming to tune into my inner solitude.

Part of the above exercise involves learning to be nourished by what is unspoken, unsaid, and partly obscure. Rather than be defeated by it, silence is a prerequisite for taking charge of our destiny and life. It is perhaps the most complete state of being and one that has espoused the work of acoustic ecologist, Gordon Hempton.

Driven by the passionate belief that “silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything,” Gordon Hempton has devoted his life to locating and conserving the sounds and sensorial experiences of nature and planetary poetics. Hempton spent thirty-five years picking out Earth’s rarest nature sounds, equipped with a 3-D microphone system that replicates human hearing.

The beauty of Hempton’s work lies in how he masterfully articulates the expansiveness of silence - of just being with nature - and the rich atmospheric details that come with it. From the laboured chugging of a steam train to the melodious chirping of sparrows high up on a pine tree, Hempton argues that if we isolate any sound or conversation from its broader surrounding context, we realise that what we are hearing is in fact only part of the full story. Everything is, in other words, hitched to everything else in the universe, in an elegant and inextricable mess, that we call life.

Perhaps it is time we ignore the petty judgements and murmurings that hover over those who choose to be economical in what they say. Instead, we should focus on discovering the breadth of self-knowledge in the quiet. Because either way, there is no report card assessment on living life through blissful solitude.

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Hi again, thanks for reading.

Just wanted to highlight that a premium members-only version of Wait! Just Listen is in the works. Whilst, free essays will continue, I am hoping to contain more intellectually oriented discussions and analysis into a separate series. It will offer multimedia elements such as audio snippets and carefully curated interviews to complement what will be a rich survey of the human condition amidst the meme-driven digital cacophony of our times. More details will be revealed in the coming weeks ahead.

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