Silence

I haven’t been really able to focus on writing much over the past year, yet the quiet nights in my life have increased in strength and number. And, as much as I hate to admit it, I kind of like the silence. It’s uncanny how they say that ‘silence is golden’.  Someone actually had to speak up to say something about it…else, how would we know the treasure bound within it! Why then are so many people distracted from attaining the wealth afforded us in quietness?  
I can create an infinite bulleted list of excuses why we don’t profit from silence beginning with my own experiences. Unfortunately, that still won’t scratch the surface of the real problem.  What is the Real Problem? Silence is humbling. It causes you to face yourself in the most intimate way –you have to befriend you.  This is difficult for many of us, because everything around us – from our family and friends to the stores in our neighborhood – lends itself to the expression of what we are supposed to be.  We are thus murdered in the noise of everything we are not contrived for.  Silence brings this to our attention. And any broken thing brought to our attention has to either be corrected or forcefully ignored.  Hence, it has taken me so long to say something.

The silence in my life has forced me to face fears, failures, let downs so poignantly, that I am literally falling asleep with the lights on. I’m too tired to move to turn them off.  It’s become more pronounced on my job. The silence in the evening gives me the clarity for the morning, which springs forth in conversations at work.  I’ve become a force to be reckoned with…a gold mind (yes, it is a play on words)!  And my new golden glow has now overshadowed some, who, for some reason, need to have it. They take my ideas as their own after telling me that it’s bad. They tell me that I’m not giving anyone else a chance to speak up. Or that it’s not all about me all because I’m always releasing the gifts within me. Once again, it’s murderous.

Though, they seek to slay me every day, the comforting silence in the evening gives me the peace to know that there’s more out there for me.  So, I press forward, take the hits, and keep moving in order to let someone else know that Silence is Golden, too
​
“The first people totalitarians destroy or silence are men of ideas and free minds.”  Isaiah Berlin