So, since I’ve been Holding My Peace (or at least trying), I’ve been thinking quite a lot about the most influential silent people I know. I love that the respect for silence is universal: Hindus and Buddhists might practice Mauna. Benedictines, Cistercians, Carmelites, and more may take monastic vows of silence. Even Pythagoras (a metaphysical, philosophizing, mathematician) required a strict rule of silence in his followers.

I am not a saint (seriously, stop laughing, I can hear you from here). Nor am I a religious, or a yogi-master (but dang, I really want to be a Jedi). So it made me question, can “normal people” be intentionally silent and if so, can we can communicate better without words?

I went to the master of quiet translators: Charlie Chaplin.

There are gads of videos of his work: tragic, hilarious, clever, mischievous, and all of them, silent. It’s quite a lovely rabbit hole to fall into.

And then I found this:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKm_wA-WdI4

 

It made me think: Perhaps the power of silence is that in it, we can think more clearly, feel more truly, and develop an awareness that cannot (and should not) be prematurely loosed. That, in time, with peace, aplomb, and good will, we may speak and affect.

 

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Most of the clips of this video cut out the first 18 seconds. I think these are incredibly important seconds, though:

“Speak.”

“I can’t.”

“You must. It’s our only hope.”