Make Your Silence Count
Many times in our lives we’ve all had to endure a whole lot of unfair things. Either from our family members, friends, frenemies (we didn’t know we had), church members or partner. We did so for many reasons; to build our endurance muscle, tolerance character, or just because we were simply out of options on what to do.
Either way, silence always works best. No one can hold you accountable for words unspoken as opposed to spoken words or actions. As Nitin Namdeo rightfully put: Words can satisfy your mind but silence satisfies your soul.
So I guess it’s safe to say that silence abates a lot of crap. Silence is not a sign of weakness neither is it a sign of foolishness. Most times, it’s a sign of a lack of better words to use. Which to me, depicts the highest form of wisdom.
But where do we draw the line? How do we ascertain that truly our silence over things isn’t a sign of any of these negative connotations?
To answer these questions would require us to deeply think about why we tend to be silent over things and how to make it count.
Let’s assume for one second your silence was from a pearl of wisdom deep-rooted place, the kind we’re always taught to “exercise” like the stoics do, for example, Eckhart Tolle. In other words, you’re making your silence count.
But how?
Silence is a powerful tool that not many people in the world have. The world is considered noisier otherwise speaking — with lots of noise on social media, lots of brags, wine and dine, competition, zealousness, and business on a more than average scale. Therefore when you encounter somebody or people who are silent (or quiet as the case may be), it’s always uncomfortable to the “next” person. You’re considered to be a nerd, jerk, psychopath, evil, you name it. Only because you chose to be quiet.
Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh — Luke 6:45
But we tend to forget that we were born in stillness. Our spirit dwells in a more silent realm than our physicals except that we ignore it when it’s beckoning on us. We also forget that words are equally powerful tools that can’t be taken back and hence should be used with caution. We neglect the fact that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh and we can’t afford it otherwise we mean it.
It makes me think again about a story by Dan Pedersen one of the writers I admire on this platform.
We tend to feel the pressure to talk talk talk, respond to others’ foolishness, attack them with our words to justify ourselves. Which invariably puts us in their exact stance of foolishness without being aware. I guess it’s the reason for the platitude which stated thus: silence is the best answer for a fool.
This is one of the ways to make our silence count.
By acknowledging that automatically it makes the other person realize you’re not arriving to their level with another unneeded speech or response.
Another way of making our silence count is by acting instead.
Now I know this is somewhat counterintuitive and contradictory to my previous statement in the second paragraph. But hear me out at least.
Silence is sitting or being still in the company of ourselves. With this solitude comes a lot of reflections, thinking, and others alike. Just because somebody is quiet doesn’t always mean they don’t have better words or actions to use to deal with a situation. More often than not they do. So when we’re still, we’ve mostly thought a way through that. And to actualize our thoughts, rather than be noisy about them, we simply act on them.
No wonder silent people are termed evil right?
But I can’t can’t deny that silence works best when we simply act upon our thoughts (carefully thought-out ones) and take the other person unawares rather than indulging them with our precious vocal energy. Because silence allows us to be introspective, which is a good source of self-improvement, retrospective, reasonable, calm, peaceful and more discerned.
For instance, if you had someone who constantly stepped on your toes for no just cause, and perhaps you always walked away quietly without saying a word. Now imagine the reaction by standing up for yourself in the most unexpected way action-wise? How do you think they’d take it? How jarring is it going to be to send home such a very strong message?
That’s the power of silence.
It doesn’t mean you couldn’t demonstrate your silence. That you can’t demonstrate your thoughts, your response, in the most reasonable yet unexpected way possible.
Let’s all learn to inculcate the habit of silence in our daily rituals. It will serve us better than reacting to every stimulus the world brings us. Because, I mean, unless we want to be worn out inside- (spiritually)- out (physically).
Let’s make our silence count in the most effective way possible to disallow the bullies from converting us into who they are or manipulating us to deviate from our authentic, spiritually-fine-tune-selves. It’s worth it.
Try doing nothing.
