The Burden of Speech

How often have you heard the phrase 'awkward silence'? The words alone send uncomfortable feelings through our minds and bodies, and we avoid that silence at all costs.  But, there is something worse, I think (for me, anyway); it is what I call the 'burden of speech'.  If the awkward silence is having nothing to say when we feel something should be said, the burden of speech is feeling the need to say something, when nothing needs saying at all.  So much of what passes for conversation or communication among us seems to be what a wiser age called 'idle chatter'.

This was recently all made palpably real for me as I spent the last four days or so on retreat in a convent of Benedictine sisters.  The blessed silence! The wonderful freedom of being able to pass someone in the hall or a corridor without having to enter into a discussion of inconsequentials, a simple smile being enough. Meal times were about eating, and when one was finished on could simply leave the table. There were no excuses to be made or sensibilities to assuage.  You could read a book in a sitting room full of other people, without being asked about its content or your reactions. Silence, not speech, was the paradigm and norm. Even in prayer the sisters relieved us of the burden of  speech by singing the prayers throughout the day as we allowed their chant to wash over us and to deepen us in our silence. 

Now, all of this may seem a kind of solipsistic indulgence, and yet I discovered that the silence made me more aware of others and their needs, not less.  When silence is the norm - at dinner, for example - you watch to see if the person next to you needs water or is looking for butter, and so you offer what they need without their having to ask.  Again, a smile or a nod serving as a 'thank you'.  In performing common tasks like washing up, you become aware of the other's space in a completely different way than usual. Being conscious of the need to avoid an unnecessary 'sorry', you move around the room with a heightened awareness of the other and where they are so as to not bump into them or get in their way.  Instead of telling the other where something is, you show them.  Instead of asking where something goes, you explore a little.  Of course, you can speak, but before you do the interior question is always 'Is it necessary?'

Now, I am willing to admit that this may all be a temperament thing, and that the freedom I discovered in laying down the 'burden of speech' would be to another a nightmare of 'awkward silences'.  However, I cannot help but reflect on our present culture's fear of silence and people's constant refuge into what can only be described as incessant, idle chatter.  In one the places I work, I witness it among young people as well as a fair amount of adults; and I am challenged by the questions: 'Does everything that comes into our heads, have to be expressed on our lips?'  'Is everything we seem almost compelled to say really worth listening to by another?'  'Are our words really about communication with the other, or actually about distancing the other as we assert our own fragile identity by creating sound waves?'

Personally, I felt relieved and blessed to be able to lay down the burden of speech, even if only for a time; but also to discover kindred spirits who like me felt nothing awkward about silences and who in silence were able to connect with each other in a rare and profound way.