The flavours of Silence

I have always been a chatter box as a kid; friendly, with variety of theories about anything and everything. Teenage brought out silence to the fore; not the very comfortable kinds but that is where my tryst with Silence began. Ever since then, I have come to appreciate the many flavours of Silence beyond the customary ‘library silence’.

The flipside of exploring silence was that my tongue might get its rest but the onslaught of the heavy traffic of thoughts is always borne by my innocent mind and eventually my brain! So I have decided to bring a balance to this equation of silence and talk; the fact that I am still seeking it is a different matter! J

Usually, when you are silent, people tend to misconstrue that silence as either about a nagging issue troubling you or a sign of arrogance or plain ignorance on a subject matter. It can all be true but many a times it is a comfortable silence too. Trust me; I have been misunderstood for my silence umpteen times! This could be because over the years I have evolved from a chirpy kid to sometimes shy and a contemplative individual who is pretty happy in her own space. Being quiet has become my second nature and my loved ones don’t like and understand that at all; of course they can’t, since they have always come to love the bubbly and chirpy me! J I hope one fine day, like me, they too will be aware of the many flavours of Silence beyond the sad one, the ones I am going to broadly list now.

Ø  Blissful Silence- Ah! WHAT a blessing it is to experience this! It is the kind of silence where you are ‘Just there’; aware of the vast expanse that is your Ultimate Reality. No questions, no seeking answers, no thoughts; just ‘That’. You just celebrate the Existence! Been blessed with this Silence twice and since then my quest for this elusive one continues.

Ø  Contemplative Silence- This is my usual comfort zone which gets misconstrued most of the time with all the things I mentioned already. Most of the time, it’s a quiet, peaceful, contented space where I know the answers I seek, are within the periphery of my mind and I just got to focus to be able to get them. A space of all Eureka moments as also a space to imbibe and absorb various lessons that Life gives me. This one heals and brings such terrific awareness and understanding of the world within and without. 

Ø  Agitated Silence- That is pretty much common I guess; some kick ass when angry and some go the silent way. I do the latter when I know I’ll end up creating havoc with my as well as someone else’ butt in the former. J Edgy I am in this silence; sarcastic and irritated remarks welcome people who shake me up from this state.

Ø  Sad and Depressive silence- Widely experienced and traditionally accepted reason for Silence. It is surely not a happy space where nothing stirs within and a state of apathy and numbness engulfs you. Its deafening in there unlike its other counterparts and needs LOADS of will power and blessings to snap out of it. If anyone is stuck in there; much love to them; they’ll come up sooner or later. J

This is by no means a conclusive categorisation on Silence; I am sure there is more to this enigmatic space. Though I for now feel good about this awareness; my bad I don’t have any source into research departments; who knows this awareness might have made its way to Organisational Behaviour (OB) papers in B-schools and I would have gotten to see students making presentations and writing assignments on the same! :D

Is there a Nobel Prize for Human Behaviour/ psychology? Should I revise this list and add a category of ‘Drunken Silence’ now? :P

Love Always...the silent way! J