18: Silence, Part 1

I crossed a bridge and took to the trail leading to Zarautz.

I was thinking about silence. I had started thinking about it when I was at Taizé. Taizé's prayer services include a silent time that usually lasts 5 to 10 minutes. The first two times I went, I found that to be an uncomfortably long period of silence, but after that I felt that the silence could be even longer. I started realizing just how long it takes me to gather my thoughts.

But I was very annoyed by the lack of actual silence during these silent times. There were thousands of young people from all over Europe, and thus there was a constant concert of coughing to be heard. It was like the pianissimo sections of a Tchaikovsky symphony: you can bet your life that those will be the moments when several people in the audience will find it necessary to cough.

"And it's funny," my friend Ryan had once told me, "that people don't normally cough. Like, listen for it in restaurants or wherever. It's when everything is quiet that you get that itch in the back of your throat…"

So it is. I almost suspect that the coughing in these cases isn't really a throat irritation so much as a subconscious unease. It is as if we have some need to assert ourselves. We rebel against being forbidden to make a sound.

Even as we entered the Taizé sanctuary, there were people with large signs which read "Silence" in several languages. These signs had little to no effect on many of the conversations taking place between the people who were entering. Even an usher coming and "hushing" the people who were making too much noise was not taken seriously. People hate being hushed. Even those who are well-meaning will usually just drop the volume of their conversation, but not stop it completely.

But just as they hated being hushed, I hated the fact that they didn't fall silent. The person seeking noise is always at an advantage, because he can generate the noise himself; the person seeking silence has to count on the co-operation of everyone within hearing distance.

Why did this annoy me so much? I got to where I couldn't even concentrate on my prayers because I was so angry at everyone who insisted on coughing and clearing their throat during the silent times. But surely one must learn to accept certain sounds as being a part of the silence? Our own breathing, our own heartbeat, will not go away.

But how much sound can be accepted as being "a part" of silence?

The true contradiction is this: I talk a lot.

Part of it is that I'm fastidious -- I try to get things precise and exact. This is the same quality I've mentioned before in connection with not making mistakes graciously. When I listen to myself speak, I constantly feel that I am telling half-truths. Ambiguities and slight inaccuracies bother me, and I feel compelled to correct or qualify them, to make room for disclaimers and exceptions. These parentheses-within-parentheses make whatever I'm saying longer, less interesting and more confusing. Even if you've never heard me talk, you can see that characteristic in my writing.

[The other contradiction is that I can't pay attention for very long if someone else speaks this way.]

But while this characteristic may account for the length and nature of my discourses, it does not explain the fact that I feel compelled to speak in the first place. Why is it that I get so annoyed with people who can't maintain silence during a prayer time or a symphony, and yet am also the most likely guy to break the "uncomfortable silence" in a table conversation?

Well, the clearest reason is of course that a prayerful silence and an uncomfortable, conversation-stopping silence are two different things. But there are other things I find in myself: I suffer, for example, from the delusion what I have to say is too important to keep to myself. I also find that I somehow feel personally responsible for the awkward lulls in conversation -- as if everyone were feeling uncomfortable and it was my duty to relieve them of their discomfort by resuming the conversation.

Yes, I certainly feel that responsibility. Where on earth could this come from? This is something I'll need to meditate on.