A Building Silence
There is a silence that destroys you. That annihilates everything you stand for, everything you fought for, all the pains you’ve endured and that made you. This kind of silence is a rejection of everything that you are and you’ve been. It’s a weird thing that silence which is the absence of something – namely talk, speech, exchange, connection etc. – can take on such violent forms. But there are situations in life where the things unsaid reveal much more about ourselves than the ones that we actually dare or care to voice.
In this kind of silence there is no peace, there’s only conjecture, construction, frustration and ultimately loss. Without word, there can be no understanding.
But then there are those other kinds of silences and one in particular can build things so much greater than words or explanation ever could. Sometimes, the “denial of words”-silence might mutate – without any real interference – into this latter kind, we could call it new silence.
It might take years or just a few hours. But ultimately that silence, that breaking of connection might spawn a new understanding. Thankfully enough as humans, we are able to forget and even the greatest horrors in life may lose their burning pain. They certainly leave their marks and they shape as much as anything else who we are and what we dream of, but with time, they’re shifted into the backgrounds of that huge scene of our consciousness. And one day we’ll wake up and our first thought isn’t that memory that broke our hearts, or that anger that made us forget all those important lessons of charity, forgiveness and love. We simply get over it. Over and beyond. Over and past it.
That’s the precise moment where the destructive silence can take on another twist and force and turn into forgiveness. Slowly. But once we’ve achieved that, whatever deserved explanation or laying out suddenly doesn’t need anymore clarification and things just become what they are, what they were more precisely.
Sometimes, a silence is a chance. And usually, as with anything, it takes two. One to be silent and the other to accept it.
I myself have just overcome such a silence of several years where no words could overcome what needed to be processed. Where projected ideas about past and future were blocking the way and view of the truth and the facts. I’ve fought that silence, have hated it, have loathed the person subjecting me to it, because of their inability to see me, hear me and accept me. And that silence has broken my heart on many occasions because I was forced into it. Because there was no ear, no possibility, no heart to listen.
And then one day, I just moved on. Laid it down at the altar of all sacrifices and got on with life. Not truly thinking that such things could indeed be overcome. Not for me. Redemption was for others. Or rather I didn’t trust myself to really get over it. I thought that something would always remain of that unspeakable pain.
Experiences and prayers later, suddenly there it was again, that thought that maybe, just maybe … or not? For years, it went on like that. Until one final day, the silence was no more. Without force or willing, but with a gentle turn of fates, suddenly the words flowed and whatever we thought needed saying suddenly had no power over us anymore.
Sometimes, a silence builds new things without us even noticing, without us even consciously working on doing it. Sometimes, those silences are bought with the pain of years past and sometimes what they build is a new house for our soul to live in.
Recent Comments