Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply...
You know who I really appreciate? Those people who aren’t uncomfortable with silence. Those people with whom you can sit at a table and have a delicious meal and not feel uncomfortable when none of you has anything to say. I love people who can communicate with one another not just with words but also with silence.
“What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Well, that’s exactly how I felt. I could hear her speak but I couldn’t really understand a word she was saying. Not because she was speaking a foreign language but because she wasn’t really saying anything.
We do that. A lot of times we just talk and talk but without actually saying anything. Maybe it’s because we want to feel that we’re heard and that people acknowledge our presence and existence. But is that really the way to go about it? Wouldn’t it be wiser to talk less and say more while at the same time immersing ourselves in those moments of silence and allowing them to just be?
Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something...
It seems to me that a lot of times we talk just so we won’t keep quiet, thinking that silence is something to be ashamed about, something to be avoided. But it’s not. There’s nothing wrong with silence. I don’t know how we got this idea that silence is awkward and that it should be avoided at all costs.
Silence is a precious gift. In that space between our words, it’s where we find ourselves. When the mind is quiet, when there are no thoughts and no words to be said, we can hear our own heart talking to us. We can hear our own soul and our own intuition.
I have learned more from being quiet and from embracing silence than I have learned from thinking and from talking. Silence is my greatest teacher, whispering things in my ear and helping me know things that I won’t be able to discover from anywhere else.
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