Silence

Silence


Updated 01:32am (Mla time) Dec 29, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the December 29, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


(I wrote this in Italy a couple of months ago during a media conference. I'm sharing it with readers after getting a lot of pressure from friends to do so. It seems to have gotten rave reviews. It was one of those things that came easy, I wrote it fast with a lot of collateral sounds around me. If you're pious, you'll probably attribute it to tongues of fire. If you're not, like me, you'll attribute it to a desperate need to express things after not being able to do so for more than a week. Whatever. It's much shorter than the original. It's as good a way as any of saying Happy New Year.)

THE FIRST time I heard about this conference from my friend Billy Esposo, who invited me to it, I was intrigued by its title: Silence, Word and Light. I have been to many media conferences, not least in Europe, and I have heard the words "word" and "light" plentifully. I do not recall hearing the word "silence" in connection with them. It is a curious word, which at first glance does not seem to belong to the basket called communications. Yet over the last couple of days, I have learned to appreciate its significance. I have heard the speakers talk about the power of the word and the power of the light, but the one thing I have been impressed with is the power of silence.

Silence in connection with sound, or with word, is often used only by way of contrast. As in the "word welling out of silence" or "light breaking out of darkness." I am glad therefore that one of the speakers brought out the many dimensions or dialectics about silence and sound, light and darkness. From which one may draw the conclusion that silence, and indeed, darkness are not just the reverse or negative sides of sound and light but that they have a meaning or weight all their own.

My own appreciation of this comes neither from classical Western philosophy nor from Christian thought but from a Zen teaching. That teaching says that a window is nothing but empty space. You may put all sorts of frames to adorn them, but in the end a window is just an empty space. It may be a square, it may be a rectangle, it may be a circle, but it is a square or rectangle or circle of -- nothing.

But try living in a house without a window. It is not possible, or at least it is not bearable. Without a window, life is impossible. Without a window, life is unbearable.

This suggests that in some cases, emptiness can be pregnant with fullness. Nothingness can be pregnant with being. Absence can be pregnant with presence.

That is what silence is. It is a window in a house, or human being.

Less poetically or mystically, I have come to appreciate the power of silence from some of the things the speakers have said. They have not always presented it in the way I am presenting it, but I've gleaned it from their talks -- like a dog hearing sounds at subhuman decibel levels -- or from reading between the lines. I've learned that silence may manifest itself in three aspects.

The first is through listening. That is a monumental insight. It is the easiest thing to talk, it is the hardest thing to listen. You need go no further to find proof of it than that I am talking here. My only excuse is that I am doing so after listening intently to the speakers. Journalists are particularly notorious in talking. You cannot find a gathering of journalists where people are not talking, often all at the same time. It's all you can do to finish a story, or even a sentence, without someone jumping in to say his or her piece. Of course, that is true as well for non-government -- or civil society -- institutions, but that is another story.

I know of people who teach other people how to talk. I do not know of people who teach other people how to listen.

The willingness to listen is the key to all communication. I do not mean by this the willingness to listen to absolute bores or people who want to talk interminably, which this world is also full of. Even divine patience has its limits, and the patience of journalists is nowhere near to being divine, as well it should be. I mean by this "listening with one's heart," as some have put it. I mean by this an openness to other people's ideas or convictions, particularly those that challenge our own, or indeed that rattle them to their very roots. I mean by it listening to Muslims if you are a Christian, listening to an untouchable if you are touchable, listening to one who does not believe in God if you do.

I find myself appreciating the faculty of silence particularly in a world where information is growing at astonishing levels. The print medium is now hard put to compete with television and radio which are manufacturing news at intervals of every half hour, if not shorter. CNN, Fox News, the BBC, and other media are already doing so. It is not inconceivable that in this age of digital technology, it may soon be producing news at even shorter intervals, or even instantaneously, as soon as they are happening.

But rather that enlightening, this plethora of information is obfuscating. Rather than making sense of the confusing, this is making confusion out of sense. Rather than deepening our understanding of the world, this is giving us blithe, facile and superficial interpretations of the world. If not indeed substituting or superimposing an artificial world on the real or sensate one.

What we get is not the word, what we get is mindless chatter.

If you are a believer, it is enough to convince you that we are witnessing the modern version of the Tower of Babel, where the prideful are condemned to speak in different tongues. If you are a believer, you will probably believe that the cure to this lies in the rediscovery of God. I myself am convinced that the cure to this lies in the discovery of silence.

(To be concluded)