How Golden Is Silence, Actually?

I’ve been on several silent retreats now and one of the most surprising discoveries was just how much speaking is unnecessary.

Without the pressure to speak amongst others, it became clear that I often said things out of anxiety - fear of looking weird or of making the other person uncomfortable.

Nowadays I rarely speak when I feel that pressure and paradoxically it has led to far deeper relationships and more interesting conversations.

It seems that the topics that come up when theres a pressure to fill the silence are the most mundane. Deeper connection seems to happen in the silences, or rather mutual comfort with silence.

Another way I could describe it is it feels almost as if there’s a fear of really being seen in silence that the surface level conversation manages to keep at bay.

I live in a apartment with a courtyard, it's taken me 10 years of knocking on folks doors. Normally it's new tenants who don't know how much noise they make and I have to ask them nicely if they could turn down their devices and show consideration.

There have groans, feuds and aggressiveness towards me for asking for peace. I'm not unreasonable. If you wish to have a party, do it adult without DJs blaring till 3am.

Most of the time, it's that they didn't realise. But it's had aggressive moments where it's turned to "It's my apartment ..."; and I get it. Folk don't like being told to show consideration for their neighbours and only when the noise effects them do they realise how disrupting noise is.

The courtyard too has seagulls and at 5am it turns in to a hellish frenzy. So luckily this has taught folk a lot about how peaceful quiet actually is and on cases have made others move out.

And too the courtyard faces the back of a couple of restaurants which are were the exhaust fans for their ovens stand. What I presume is due to lack of calibration as these whirl sometimes up until 2am even though their restaurants close at 11pm. You can really feel the level of atmospheric vibration drop when they shut off. It's a sigh of relief when they do.

I've plead, and the local council is useless so I have put up with it. 3am is really the only time I can actually relax my ears in to a slumber because having hyper audio sensory really sucks.

Peace is nice and I wish others would value it more. But with peace, folk don't know what to do. It scares them at first because it's rare to encounter in this day and age.

Other HN users keep telling us that we should support dense housing development. I think those people have never lived in an apartment complex with trashy neighbors.

> Without the pressure to speak amongst others, it became clear that I often said things out of anxiety

I can't go probably 100 words without saying something stupid or flat out contradictory. I'll think back to the conversation, realize I don't actually think or believe what I said, and wonder just what possessed me to say that and how many people I've alienated with words that I don't even believe or hold to be true!

Silence is one way to avoid making those mistakes, but that's me avoiding the problem, not actually solving it (and it would be nice to speak all the time in truth, with coherence, and consistent with what I believe), despite not having much to say in the first place, unless:

- to clear misunderstanding / requests ("Excuse me, but I think this is my seat.")

- to prevent harm / danger ("Look out!")

- civics / politeness ("Excuse me", "Good morning", "I'm fine, thank you.")

I've done silent retreats as well, but I'm not a big fan. I live on my own and get plenty of silence that way. Being around other silent people was an odd experience, sort of like being on the train with people staring into space. It reminded me of being sent to Coventry. I did find it easy to communicate on silent retreat but not enjoyable. I just went off and read a book or took a walk.