As I spend my days in a fastmoving world seeing mostly frustrated & anxious people I see that silence as a virtue is long gone and you find fewer people who actually prefer silence over a lot of things that do not directly hurt them or something that has no real purpose or outcome. My mother and most of the parents say repeatedly that silence is the best virtue when we become a loud, noisy, unbearable child but it seems that now we lost our first and most important lesson. I tend to bring it back to our minds once again, it is not the unconscious child that needs that lesson rather the conscious grown-up people.
Silence a virtue best to be worn? – 21st century.
Silence is of two things; Silence of tongue and Silence of mind.
1. Conversation is uniquely a human phenomenon but studies indicate that approximately we spend two third of conversation time is devoted to social topics, most of which can be given a generic label Gossip, which has no outcome whatsoever. If being human is all about talking, it’s tittle-tattle of life that makes the world go round, not the word of wisdom that falls from the lips of Aristotle and the Rumis than we should rethink. Our world is cushioned in the interests and intricacies of everyday social life. This fascinates us beyond measure.
Let me illustrate a bit to reinforce my point. Next time you are in a Café or a Bar, just listen for a moment to your neighbors. You will discover, that around at least two-thirds of their conversation is taken up with matters of social import. Who is doing what with whom, and whether it is good or bad – language mainly seems to be used for exchanging information on social matters and we seems to be obsessed with gossiping from our tea table to dinner table to everywhere. Even the design of our mind seems to reinforce this. There are two things we mainly use language for Profit and Pleasure. We have found our pleasure in social bonding, boasting each other and boosting our self-esteem from gossiping (studies indicate a positive relation). Language seems to be our greatest treasure, yet most of the time seem to do so little with it?
Making my point, Silence of the tongue is important. Talking when it is most important to talk, when your word is of most worth and when you share knowledge with your social circle. Otherwise, silence is the best option to opt. What will you achieve with it? You start to absorb, listen and analyze. Absorbing is an art which teaches you a lot of different aspects of life, you start to ponder on different subjects and it comprises of Remembering and Retaining. It is food for your mind. You construct your behavior, actions, and feelings according to what you absorb from your surroundings, you feel the environment way before the other and your reaction & action construct accordingly. Listening is another art which you master, understanding other people views, feelings, and their level of understanding and inner self. Listening gives a consciousness of the need to imaginatively put oneself in the place of others in order to genuinely understand them, their ideas. Analyzing, it makes you analyze all that you are absorbing and listening and let you construct in a better way and let you reach a consensus which builds up your character and increase your knowledge, making you wise. It makes you the master who can take gold from a sack of a fraudster full of Iridium. When you master the art of silence of tongue and start absorbing, listening & analyzing, the words you say thereafter will be of worth, words of wisdom. A sentence would be enough to explain all you want to say.
2. To make another point let’s do a bit of Math’s first;
– Considering a lifespan of 75 years, one has 657,000 hours in total.
– With 7 hours of sleep daily, the person sleeps for about 200,000 hours.
– Hours one is awake – 457,000 hours
– Research says that we spend 46.7% of our wake up time thinking about things we are not doing at that moment or out of the reality. This takes away about 215,000 hours.
– We are left with 242,000 hours i.e. 28 years to live.
Leave the rest of the Math here and just remember 28 hours to live and 46.7% of wake up time thinking about things we are not doing at the moment and are out of the reality. So, what we make out of the thought process going on 46.7% time of our day from 28years to live. Here comes the Silence of Mind, to be skeptic, open-minded & self-constructive and not to be gullible, close minded, in illusion, dreaming dragons or social high thoughts. If you cannot do it, shut the thinking process, put your mind to silence – sleep, do something physical or just pray if you are religious. But don’t think matters that have no meaning, and are just a lower-self thoughts. What you will achieve by this? Being able to think deep into any subject of matter, rationalizing it and Wisdom, simple.
Having explain my point “Silence is a Virtue best to be worn”, we should evaluate our life and make it our trait. Revive it in your life, feel everything to the fullest and enjoy your life.