The other day, I was talking to one of my dear friends. Him and I often talk about our lives, struggles, etc.; we just have that kind of friendship. He opened up to me about some stuff, and I, in return, told him what I thought was the right thing to say in that moment.
After having that conversation, it made me think. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything positive back at all. What if I just made a promise that wouldn’t and couldn’t be fulfilled by me or anyone else? It made me wonder if trying to remain positive with the ones we love can truly benefit them, in the way that we see fit.
I could finally understand why some people remain silent when we tell them something sad or when we open up to someone that we care about. Silence speaks volumes. A loss of words is not necessarily always a negative connotation. A moment of silence can be so powerful.
I think that there have been times in my life when maybe if I would have understood this, situations would have been different, and I would have understood people’s reasoning behind their decisions better.
Being a lover of the English language and words, I have often embraced every aspect of my life by talking, speaking or writing words. I have never liked silence; I have always thought of it as cold, lonely and occasionally awkward. But, I think that now, I understand it. I understand that silence can be a sense of shock, a sense of acceptance or a sense of the unknown. Sometimes, as humans, we don’t know what to say; the words we want to speak cannot make their way out of our mouths – not because we are too weak to speak them, but because we would be telling a lie to the person we love and to ourselves. Those kinds of lies are the worst kind.
The next time you hear silence, it is not because someone does not care; they just do not have the words to tell you want they want to say, and if that doesn’t speak volumes on it’s own, then I don’t know what does.