Absolute Dead Silence
April 6th, 2009Wind back to Sep 29th, 08, I wrote this post on Silence:
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Silence
is scary huh?
People pause. They don’t know what to do.
There is a void.
You instantly think you need to fill it.
What if you didn’t? What if you bought 30seconds of ad time during peak times and had nothing. Absolutely nothing.
People would be in the kitchen during the ad break going “who turned the tv off?”, others would look up to see what was going on, they might even tune in.
Silence is polarising, we are so used to noise, we have no idea how to react.
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In a world of continual noise, silence is deafening, oh no what to do? Hell we even equip ourselves with a cell phone at all times to avoid complete silence, time to ourselves. The rare times are probably in the shower or exercise (although the ipod is typically providing some noise).
Take some time out, for some real silence, to relax, ponder the world.
You’ll find it much more compelling than you initially thought.
Tags: silence
This entry was posted on Monday, April 6th, 2009 at 5:50 pm. 
April 7th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
I took the afternoon off yesterday to go walk in the Waitakeres for a few hours…
I’m used to being in the bush but being out there by myself is a very different experience… quiet and peaceful except maybe for my thoughts 🙂
April 8th, 2009 at 12:47 am
Everytime you do it you always think to yourself why don’t I do this more?… and we really should.
April 14th, 2009 at 6:06 am
Hey Ben,
Do you know compassionate silence? It’s something I encountered when researching non-violent communication.
Non-violent communication is about allowing and helping a person to be who she really wants to be. It’s about enabling this person to express herself in a way which is satisfying, which enables her to connect with her feelings and the needs associated with these feelings.
It’s about letting be. Even when that person speaks in silence.
Letting the silence be can make her even more aware of what her silence means than when you start filling the gap with explanations or weird questions.
When you allow the silence to be, you connect because you show you’re willing to experience this silence. It’s a bit like mirroring but in a passive rather than aggressive way.
You let it be. And you wonder.
I wonder, can you let yourself be? Do you remember moments when you encountered silence within yourself? When was that? And what did it mean?
Kind regards,
Hannes
April 14th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
@Hannes Thanks for your comment 🙂 That’s what this post is about, experiencing silence. It is quite a rare experience these days.