Power of Silence

I always wondered in my life whether situations, where someone is apparently trying to hammer you, can be taken in its stride! When you are hit hard, how do you keep your head straight, without feeling fragmented and belittled. These situations happen all around us, not specifically by someone who is superior in power or position to us. The overtaking Uber driver giving a nasty look, the ‘super-power’ boss showing his red eyes, the fellow elevator passenger showing his implicit frustration when it stops at a lower level for you or your life partner showing a subtle sign of disagreement – all these can generate a feeling of tightening the lid on you, thereby giving you a feeling of suffocation and anxiety. And anxiety in any form or the desperate need of venting out is always counterproductive. Situations like these, inevitably prompt the ‘me’ in myself to react, in either explicit or implicit manner. But, does that really help?

Yes it helps, only to be in the negative connotation of helping. However justified my point of view looks like, the ‘me’ factor in the other person would not allow him to incline his head in agreement. I am consciously avoiding the term ‘ego’ here, because most of us consider this to be negative, we tend to forget that amour propre is a sense of self-worth or self-respect. So when every human being’s self-worth is important, how can you justify yours? Many thoughts suggest to confront such scenarios so that you can make your points felt. My personal experiences suggest me that confrontations only bring more confrontations and ultimately you feel lost in the tide. During my long career as people manager in profession, a husband and a father at home, I have experienced that getting into a confrontation in any form to justify your self-worth, is a never-ending process and it’s a lose-lose game. Self-worth, cannot be justified; it appears, by your sincerity in a relationship, by commitment and by immense maturity.

One definite sign of such maturity is the ‘power of silence’, I call it strategic silence. The period of silence makes your mind calm, helps in settling down the chatter going on in your head and you buy some time to ‘respond’ to a situation, rather than ‘reacting’ to it. I remember one such incidence where one fine morning, my reporting manager started reacting to every sentence of mine. During initial couple of moments, I tried to justify myself, but those were apparently re-fueling his already cluttered hammering. Clearly, he was not in his normal self and something has already made him disturbed. Consciously, for the first time, I withdrew myself internally and told him that I will come back after some time to discuss the point.  I left his office quietly, and could sense a sudden void in the chatter process behind. During evening hours, he called me back and wanted to know the point of discussion once again, this time in his normal self, constructive to ideas and open to thoughts. A momentary silence has done it’s trick.

There is a problem, though. This problem is with our ‘self-perception’. We think that if we remain silent in a turbulent situation, we are incapable of withstanding it. The moment a bullet is fired at me, I have to retaliate. We have grown up listening to proverbs like ‘offence is the best form of defense’. But my two cents on this is that, offence is definitely not the best strategy in human relationships. All human relations slowly grow on trust, social compatibility and commitment, the degree and extent may vary from relation to relation.

A single incidence of offence has the potential to ruin the very basis of any relationship. Retaliation is lethal, silence is wholesome.

Silence has to be practiced. The very nature of human existence is to retaliate or be offensive. Even during the pre-evolutionary stage, human beings had to constantly launch offensive attacks against their surroundings for mere survival. During that stage of evolution, human relations were not evolved and hence there was no need to be responsive. So, when we consciously practice strategic silence, we have to struggle against our basic evolutionary character. It takes time and energy. But once mastered, silence can be your best friend forever (Please keep aside the iconic silence pattern of one of our previous Prime Ministers, though).

Silence, rather thoughtful silence, can win over adverse situations. Silence is not weakness. It doesn’t at all mean that I don’t have a point of view. I have one, very thoughtful one, which I would share when there is peace and that is my power – ‘The Power of Silence’.