“He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.” – Elbert Hubbard
Finnish Proverb – Talking is silver, silence is gold.
These days with so much information flooding all our senses 24/7, every second of every minute. It seems hard to find a moment of total silence with or without people around you. Yet when a person is silent we instantly find them odd, anti-social or just broken in some way. In some ways it does make sense to ‘judge’ someone to be odd due to their lack of social engagement in a time when this seems to be the against norm, be it because of technology or just the increase in good old fashioned blabbering about yourself.
Personally (being a Finn) this puts me in awkward situations, seeing that I’m not known for running my mouth. I enjoy listening and observing rather than trying to get myself heard constantly. So when I meet people who cannot understand my silence I feel like I am the one who is not doing what I am ‘supposed’ be doing. Now don’t get me wrong here, I can hold up a long conversation with anyone in any context and enjoy it. However at times I feel like it goes completely against my own nature.
This has made me respect people who instantly understand that there are people who don’t always talk and that silence isn’t a bad thing.
Here is an interesting article about Finnish silence -” Finnish silence can be golden, says American expert”
http://yle.fi/uutiset/finnish_silence_can_be_golden_says_american_expert/6454371
kamakawida 