Words, silence and communicating

I wonder if there is really a need for this constant noise. Do we really have to talk for hours without saying nothing?

I always thought that words were important and in a way, I still think so. I believe communication is fundamental to understand and to be understood by the surrounding world. Yet lately my thought has changed.

I love interesting conversations, those where you create a link between two minds. Those that shift in a moment from the loud laughter to meditative moments, to silence and gaze.

These are small treasures of beauty, which often happen unexpectedly with new people or with people very close to us. Unfortunately, in recent years I have become more and more aware of how much people tend to over-talk.

More often than not it is a one-way conversation, trying to assure the self of a personal hypothesis. I’m not saying it's wrong. But I wonder if there is really a need for this constant noise. Do we really have to talk for hours without saying nothing? Would not it be better to reserve the value of words to when we really have something to say? Would it not be a personal evolution learning to listen?

A friend of mine told me she spent a week in a community living in silence. Her mind initially so used to speak, slowly softened within this new dimension in which she learned to live at her own pace. She told me: "You know, at the end I felt I knew the people I lived with that week and I know they too got to know me. We never talked to each other; I do not even know their names. I think it would be nice to know people like that too. In silence first and only later, by speaking. "

To quote Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction “Don’t you hate (...) uncomfortable silences? Why do we feel it's necessary to yak about bullshit in order to be comfortable? That's when you know you've found somebody special. When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably enjoy the silence”. Exactly