Hush… May 2, 2008
Posted by Zachary in Friends, Random.Tags: Silence
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Dear Reader,
I’m stumped and I need all the help I can get on this.
Recently, I got onto the listening end of a very amazing and befuddling statement.
“Silence is my style of communication.”
And I couldn’t help but to take this thought and attempt to chew it into digestible bite sizes. Is such thing ever possible? Isn’t communication meant to be anti-silence? I know of cases where less is actually more, but in this case; can nothing ever be something? I’m not talking about moments of silence. I’m talking about using silence as an effective medium of communication in the long run.
Please post your thoughts and help me out on this.
a few thots:
when the sender of silence has been saying something then goes silent, it allows the impact of what he/she has just said to sink in…
when the receiver of message becomes silent it could mean
a. he/she needs to absorb and process the message just received…that’s good silence
b. the message just received was very strong and the silent response could perhaps cause the sender to rethink/reword what he just said
just some thots : )
pray for us we are off to camp today. weather isn’t very nice…
hah! i JUST read yesterday i think, from somewhere… some blog or some article (i can’t remember where sadly!)
“silence is words”
i’m STILL trying to get my head round that one!
hmm i reackons its all to do with body language and speaking with the eyes not the mouth.
Like communicating frustration with one death stare or communicating direction by shifting the eyes to that direction
but then that is communicating with body language not silence haha.
i dont think silence as a means of communication in the long run would be effective haha maybe you have an “awkward silence guage” haha so the answer is based on the awkwardness of the moment… like… how is your pet dog “awkward guage at maximum” oh when did he pass
or what are you doing tonight “awkard guage low” awesome meet you at 7.
haha
the 3 of you above proved a point: australians are more vocal/opinionated then the asians. Lol…
Angela-
Haha, prayed for you guys, still praying and will be praying more! Don’t worry about the weather. God always provides for us, I have been leading mega games events for quite a while now, so have countless weather testimonies. =)
Caitlyn-
Yes! I fully understand what you mean! This post goes along the same lines of that! Befuddling INDEED!
Justin-
Haha, that isn’t that still counted as where less is more? Or what some of my friends term it as, “strategic inaction”. LOL.
good to hear a kiwi and a brunei-ian (haha) join the aussie gang. yes that’s the way
i believe moments of silence in conversation, dialogue and talks are very effective. even in ministering one of my favourite things to do is just to shut up - but i guess that’s not what we’re a talking about.
mmm… silence in the long run is most definitely a strong form of communication. the question is whether or not it achieves the objective of the communicator.
people (i have, too) choose to remain silent for many reasons; dissapproval, quiet admittance, indifference and the list goes on… like all other forms of communication, it definitely depends on the context - how it is brought across and whether the audience understands or perceives correctly.
and what about the communicator? for a usually silent person; silence often may just mean… indifference. but what about a super sanguine relational person?? it takes on a whole new meaning then.
for me, silence is a tough tough tough way to communicate - you are forever wondering how the other person is going and whether or not it is the right message sent & received. but, if you ask then you are no longer communicating with silence. haha… sigh. so yeah, really strong way to communicate
anyways, having said all that - i have huge respect for those who have only a few, quality things to say (yes, because i think i have verbal diarrhea). remember we all kept saying that about leon that time at his bday supper when you were over here?
hey, here’s a random reader who used to attend y-hope but is now worshipping Him in planetshakers city church melbourne. (:
to me, it’s not so much the “words within the silence” but the silence after the words. if one were to say everything without silence, how much can the other person absorb? and even if the person managed to capture everything, the most important thing is not the essence of the conversation but the revelation people got from the conversation itself. and that can only be achieved through meditating on the words through silence.
for the communicator, the silence could be a form of reminding him/herself that sometimes, the unsaid can be as powerful, if not more powerful, than the said.
just some random thoughts; by the way i really look up to your blog. take care and God bless!
your post made me think of a long ago post i wrote and brought some memories of a friend back. and i guess for me, i would think that silence IS a form of communication at certain parts of my life.
at a period of time, silence was a form of comfort for me and another friend. where silence wasnt awkward but reassuring. where we would be silent for the longest time and the world would crash on us and we dont really care? but aye, it is hard to explain that in words as it IS a form of silence and not of words.
perhaps i would share with you over supper time or something next time? thanks for tracing back this part of my past.
Oh man. All this commotion about silence itself. What an irony! =p
Chris-
I kinda mirror your respect for the “man of few words”. I tried to do it quite a number of times, but my personality always foil my attempts to portray that wise ole’ sage feeling… And thanks for bringing out the part where silence from different people means different things. That takes the whole discussion to another level. Hm…..
diane-
“the unsaid can be as powerful, if not more powerful, than the said.”
I’ll chew on this bit for a while more… Anyway, thanks for comment all the way from Melbourne! I really appreciate comments like these.. It encourages me to keep blogging. =)
angela-
that’s something i never did understand about you. I sincerely hope it’s just a “you” thing and not a “women” thing. Some species are too complex for my simple mind.
“but aye, it is hard to explain that in words as it IS a form of silence and not of words.”
I read and re-read the above. I TOTALLY don’t get it. LOL.
usually, its a way of keeping the distance. LOL