Last update: December 18, 2015
"Few things are as deafening as silence"
-Mario Benedetti-
What is hidden behind the silence? Confusions, truths, puns, hopes, dreams, lies, secrets, anxieties, fears, excuses, imagination or, perhaps, nothing important.
Everything that passes through our mind but does not come out of our lips constitutes ours silence.
Did you know that our mind formulates about 70.000 thoughts every day? And, of this huge amount of information, we select what seems most relevant to us.
This incredible capacity of our mind makes us capable of giving life to great stories and, at the same time, makes us vulnerable.
What thoughts do we choose? Are they all really relevant?
Silence and thoughts
When we think, most of the time on the outside we remain silent, but within us there is a continuous noise that comes from our thoughts.
Among these thoughts, some are automatic, and are the ones we use to quickly interpret and explain everyday situations.
These are those phrases that come from our inner voice and that provide us with explanations about what is happening around us, about our interpretation of the actions of others and even about ourselves.
These are those phrases that suddenly appear in our heads and that, in most cases, we don't even question. We do not ask ourselves if it is a question of truth or speculation that is not based on any concrete basis.
It might seem like these thoughts are under-elaborated, but they actually come from our deepest worldview: from the basic patterns.
Patterns are the beliefs and rules by which we establish the values ​​we create for ourselves throughout life. They form together with our life experiences, and contain everything we think of what we see, filtered through the education we have received.
How do we interpret the silence of others?
Usually by adding to that silence our speculations and hypotheses, that is, our own thoughts.
We are used to giving explanations to everything, because uncertainty, and with it everything that is beyond our control, we do not like.. Even though we are only able to see 10% of reality, we "fill in" that void with our explanations of what the world should be like.
Thoughts such as "if he is silent, has something to hide" or "whoever is silent agrees" are just examples of how we have decided to interpret the silence of others without even having evidence to confirm it. And, in fact, they are very likely to be wrong assumptions.
We can't read other people's minds, even psychologists can't.
It is important to have concrete data that can make us understand if what we think corresponds to reality or if, on the contrary, they are irrational thoughts that are making us feel bad for nothing or that are leading us to accuse someone unfairly.
Managing silence is more difficult
than handle the word.
The best thing is to always be able to get the person who is now silent to tell us what is happening to him, even if we must respect his right not to tell us some of his thoughts. We all have the right to privacy.
Hiding information that is relevant to someone else (even when we do it out of fear) affects the free choice of the person involved, and is a way of harming them. For example, in the case of infidelity.
If you have decided to keep quiet, make sure you don't hide something that might be important to someone else. There are things that we need to tell even if it is not easy, because they directly affect someone else's life. And these secrets could limit the freedom of someone we respect.
All the knots come to a head sooner or later, and if that person learns about it from a third party or by accident, it will be a blow to her and the consequences for the relationship will be far worse.
Words have great power,
but also silence.
Silence alone cannot be a proof of reality. After all, we are the interpreters of reality. Of our reality. Which is not the same as that of the others.
Yes, silence can hurt a lot. But it might as well not hide anything important, be mere imagination. And the imagination is endless.
Listen, son, the silence.
It is an undulating silence,
a silence,
where valleys and echoes slide
and that folds the foreheads
to the ground.
-F.G.Lorca-
