Speech: Silence Is Golden

the boy replied “I did nothing but sat on the ground and listened. In the silence, I heard the ticking of the watch and just looked for it in that direction.”

This small anecdote conveys a lot but symbolically two main things:

1. A peaceful mind can think better than a worked-up mind.

2. Allow a few minutes of silence to the mind and the mind invariably comes up with the right answer to the problem at hand.

Silence is golden

We all are familiar with the age old saying, ‘Silence is golden’, or ‘Speech is silver, and Silence is golden’. We accepted it without ever reflecting on this ancient wisdom which our elders taught us. One meaning of this proverb means that silence is better than speech assuming gold is more precious than silver. But why so? Our tongues are meant for speaking. When we speak, we communicate with others, building a relationship. But, most of the time, we communicate untruths in our speech. Sometimes we fail to communicate adequately resulting in misunderstanding. Speech sometimes distorts information as the speaker hardly pays attention to what he or she is saying. In fact, words are a very inadequate means of accurate communication. They are meant for general and not for specific or unique use. And if you add to this intentional distortion and deception, you can guess how disastrous speech can be. And unfortunately, we persist with speech because silence is in a situation is viewed as a cause of awkwardness and misunderstanding.

Speech may be