As I was contemplating the word ‘silence,’ it occurred to me that even thou my mouth was closed, my mind was making conversation. It was carrying on a conversation with reason on one side and rationale on the other. Is one actually silent when their mind is working? It seems that, at times, I can hear myself think. It has often been expressed that ‘we should think before we speak,’ meaning that before we make our conversation public, we should first have that conversation in our own mind. For as, Thomas Carlyle has said, “…all the considerable men I have known…forbore to babble of what they were creating and projecting. Nay…but…hold thy tongue for one day: on the morrow, how much clearer are thy purposes and duties; what wreck and rubbish have those mute workmen within thee swept away, when intrusive noises were shut out! Speech is too often not, as the Frenchman defined it, the art of concealing thought; but of quite stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal.” Carlyle summarized it this way: “Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of life.”
“Speech is silver and silence is golden.” Versions of that phrase date back to Ancient Egypt. Only the last part, “Silence is Golden,” is found in contemporary speech. That phrase is very meaningful to me as I know for myself that, it is always difficult for me to express in ‘silver speech’ what I felt was a ‘golden thought’ in my head. Thank goodness for the written word for we can write that ‘golden thought’ forwards and backwards and inside and out before we allow it to see the light. But our mouths are too often put in gear before our minds have been fired up.
Is there a noise in our heads when our mind is carrying on a conversation with itself? Most, will probably think that to be a silly question but I must admit that sometimes my thinking is quite loud.
We are all aware of the malady called tinnitus; those who suffer from it would probably agree that ‘silence would be most golden.’ Tinnitus is a constant rhythmic noise in a person’s ears. It is a very common malady among people between 55 and 65 years old, based on a report of symptoms on a general health questionnaire. About one in five people in the general population claim they have tinnitus. I, personally, have tinnitus, I can’t say that I suffer from it because I have learned to ignore it. What I hear on a constant basis is what sounds more like night crickets making their common chant as opposed to ringing. Some people allow tinnitus to actually make them sick. So the question is, if we can hear tinnitus sounds that originate in the head (not from outside), can our thought conversations also be heard from inside our head?
That question can only be answered by each individual. We know, also, that mentally ill persons claim to hear voices inside their heads. Do we have to be ill to hear ourselves think?
There are occupational hazards where people are subjected to loud noises every day. Naval gunners on large war ships are subject to practice drills even when they are not at war. They have to be in the direct vicinity when deafening explosive rounds are sent aloft. The explosion is terrific, and if they did not have protective gear for their ears, they would be deaf in a short period of time. Many work in factories and/or manufacturing plants where loud machinery is a constant assault on their ears from the time they arrive at work until their shift is over. For them, too, silence is definitely golden.
I remember times, as a child, when it was so hard to hold still or be silent. Yet, the teacher required us to be silent with our heads on our desk. Violators were to lose their recess privileges. I hated that because I was full of energy and needed to be moving. As I recall, it was very much like being tied up against my will with a gag over my mouth. I wasn’t a rebellious child nor did I openly complain about what I thought then to be an oppressive requirement, but I remember it well. Physical and mental freedom are very important to me, and maybe that is where it originated.
There are and have been despots that require civil obedience without an option to express opposition. Silence by oppression may seem, to the oppressor, to mean approval. But, sooner or later, there will be a reckoning as all people are born with a hate for shackles. Sooner or later a way will be found to throw off the shackles and break the hateful silence. Forced silence will never be golden! God bless us all to appreciate self imposed silence and to use it to prepare our minds so that when we speak, our speech will be silver.