Silence

                                                    Lonely tree, collage and oil painting

                                                                          Amarie

Silence can be a deliverance. After my studies at university, I started working on the Belgian coast with a colleague, overwhelmed by a season in full swing. He was a cheerful individual, consistently in a positive mood, yet possessed an abundance of words. He did not stop for an entire day, being able to last hours of conversation without getting tired. Some talkative customers came to keep him company for a while, to sit in the chemists' shop, to have a chat, and to tell the latest jokes of the moment. Often he would embellish them with new items, making them funnier or more salacious to try to debauch me and make me blush under the pretext of opening my pure, ignorant, inexperienced ears to the real world. He passionately believed that my education, which was too serious for his taste, was to be perfected. Of course, working in this environment could be terribly frustrating because you did not have the opportunity to place a single word. At the end of the day, you had your head foggy with all his gossip, sensible, demented, and absurd verbiage. I would have given a fortune for him to be silent for even ten minutes to regain my senses and my concentration. Our days were already incredibly stressful due to the extra work, and a moment of silence would have been most beneficial. Silence allows us to replenish our energy. It lowers blood pressure, decreases stress and hormone levels, decreases anxiety, and promotes neuron growth. Afterwards, to de-stress from such tiring days by drawing and painting, silence promoted my creativity and serenity.

On the other hand, silence can become unpleasant, painful, and poisonous when one waits for an explanation or the outcome of a project. Sentences, ideas, and questions that we expect answers, replies, and retorts never manage to hatch. The more time passes, the more the silence weighs on us, and the more painful, unagreeable, and frustrating it becomes. By dint of waiting, hoping, and wishing, we get disappointed; we drop in bitter disgust; we have disturbing dissatisfaction; and even a certain anger holds you by the throat.

Silence is the act of being peaceful, listening to, and saying nothing to reflect in ourselves and abandon prejudices. Silence is a way to communicate when feelings are difficult to express and there is a fear of being misunderstood. This can help avoid misunderstandings and conflicts on topics that are not worth discussing. Words spoken in anger can be regretted and cause deep, ineffaceable harm. It is often said that words are silver and silence is golden. Speech is considered less noble than silence because it can lead to confusion, error, or conflicts, while silence allows for listening, observing, and feeling. Silence can thus serve as a basis for achieving inner peace and mastery of one's thoughts.

It took time to understand that there is a lack of emotional education in some individuals to express their feelings. Not knowing how to manage emotions such as anger and sadness, they take refuge in silence. I am convinced that it is a hundred times better than enduring their repressed feelings that explode without control.