We?ve revered silence since childhood. Grandmother?s stories praise great sages who?ve attained truth and enlightenment on the Himalayas. This meditative stillness is external to social interactions; it?s not communicative, they are internal beliefs that concern nobody else. But in grappling with daily life activities, the rest of us not on the Himalayas have to contend with different genres of silence.
I?ve observed four kinds of silence that are eloquent: the silence of being indifferent, defensive and not wanting to commit ourselves, the silence of utter helplessness, the sudden silence of great happiness when you can?t express your appreciation, and the silence of grief.
Silence of indifference: When someone does not react on a hard topic addressed to him, he wants not to listen to facts, gets defensive using a shrill voice, or else he becomes silent. This is the silence of total indifference, the worst kind of response. The person does not care at all. He does not commit to anything, perhaps because, ?What?s in it for me?? This character is very difficult to understand. In society or in business, silence as an individual?s strong weapon is almost impossible to gauge. When a boss practices the silence of indifference, the subordinates float in complete restlessness.
Sometimes a silently indifferent person controls a complex situation by making it indifferent. It?s a tactic of denying a subject, making it generic and disappear, so everything goes for a toss. This silence of indifference can create cold war among different teams in an organisation.
When people are guilty of misconduct, they often use silence as their best defence. If a person starts being defensive of mistakes, becomes arrogant then falls silent, there?s no hope of improvement. You can see he resents being corrected. Aside from instances where silence denotes agreement, silence can also stand for a variety of emotions like anger, disagreement, an attempt at self-control and fear.
Silence of helplessness: During social research, a 15-year-old girl was responding to me as though she didn?t know what to say. She took time to gather her mental impressions and express them. On the subject of girl-boy relationships, she said today?s generation is open and frank, hiding nothing, unlike the older generation. Then hesitatingly she started narrating a story, which I understood at the end was her personal story. This made me realise her silence of helplessness involved her parents? circumstance. She discovered that her mother has a boyfriend. This man has been coming home as the girl?s private tutor since she was 10 years old. The tutor was always very nice with her, but she observed that her father did not like him. During her father?s out-of-town travel, the tutor would entertain her mother and her in a restaurant.
One day, turbulence erupted between her parents. She found her mother was better adjusted with her boyfriend than her father. The girl loved her father and always felt anxious for him. When the father was resigned to the situation, he took a transfer without breaking the marriage. She recounted how breaking of her parents? marriage was unimaginable. Yet, silently she was happy that her mother was happy with the boyfriend. Her father did not interfere in her mother?s life, so she could not realise her father?s pain or what he must be going through. Actually, the girl appeared quite traumatised. She had no answer to who was right or wrong. She felt totally dumb. She said she cannot talk or take anybody?s help, she just has to digest it all like a spectator. This is her silence of helplessness.
Silence of happiness: Silence is not restricted to negative expressions. When you are in love, it?s easier to slip into your senses, and attend to your partner without words. For true love to blossom, you have to unscramble yourself from instant, often meaningless, information on Internet, Twitter, Facebook, TV, email forwards, and be enveloped in silence. My friend, internationally acclaimed French actor and mime Marcel Marceau, had queried, ??Don?t the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words??? He spread his ?art of silence? worldwide. An art critic had said the silence in Marcel?s pantomime accomplishes in less than two minutes what most novelists cannot do in volumes.
Silence of sadness: When you are sad, words fail you. If you want to be supportive of someone who is grieving, just be around, don?t talk because your silence talks. A good listener encourages others to talk, share ideas and makes them feel valued. As Martin Luther King Jr said, ??We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.??
Actually, silence can be your most effective tool for everyday life. When a new challenge hits you, just hold your horses and make silence your first response. Sometimes, the problem can just go away while you see them in anger or before you take some hasty action. In silence you pause, you reflect on it and intelligently increase your chances of being on target to resolve the challenge.
Shombit Sengupta is an international consultant to top
managements on differentiating business strategy with execution excellence (www.shiningconsulting.com)