Ever sit in a room with some one, and neither of you can see the other but there is this tension. Something unsettling about the quiet. Leaves you edgy and twitching in your seat. Nervously glancing around.
Is it just you or does the other person have this reaction as well? Maybe the other person is the cause of the reaction. Maybe there is some psychic cue nudging you between the eyes.
Or maybe you are just really bad at comfortable silence. But then why is it perfectly comfortable with others...
Maybe it is all you and you are just tense or eager to say something and that makes you think the feeling is mutual.
But how many times have you broken that silence, or someone else has, by a word or a sudden noise and both of you laugh or one of you says "I was just waiting for you to say something!"
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Often times, the quiet being uncomfortable comes from our upbringing in a very, very noisy environment. People are used to hearing constant noise. Either on a radio or people talking or the TV. Our world is full of noise.
ReplyDeleteNow, take away that noise. Silence can be very oppressive. A sense of tension follows because something is missing. This applies to any part of your life that you take for granted or just accept. You feel the same way as if your Internet went down, you are out of range of a cell tower or your electricity died.
But it wasn't always this way. In the past people were accustomed to silence. And it is a real art to sit comfortably silently with someone. One of the characters in one of Lucy Maud Montgomery's books said: "If you can sit half an hour in silence with someone, and find it comfortable; then you can truly be close to that person."