Thoughts Need Words; Words Need a Voice

There is a possible way of thinking about silence as doing rather than meaning.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Most people are afraid of silence because they equate silence with irrelevance. We want to be heard and seen. We want to make ourselves relevant. But in our quest to be heard and noticed and thought well of by others, we often drown out our inner voice.

So, you see,

Silence is not just an absence of voice; rather, it is a valuable means of interaction but sometimes with negative effects. The opacity of silence makes a myriad of possible meanings; it invites an overinvestment of the interpreter’s meaning to fill it.

The following story illustrates my supposition

One early morning, David and I awoke to the shafts of the sun bouncing in through the windows. We decided to go cruising. It was a beautiful day, California-style, with the sun shining hazily through a light smog, and the Beach Boys serenading loudly.

Somewhere on Sunset Blvd., we spotted a hitchhiker. He was thin and pale and sorry-looking, but there he was: the hitchhiker, wearing tight jeans torn at the knees, a…