@rild / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND
It is hard not to speak to the one you Love. I did that twice. I did that to choose to allow silence between us, in an attempt to find some cure for our toxic arguments about many things we do and don’t do. In those weeks of not talking, I realized we had been talking so much that we got so sick. Talk + sick = toxic. We needed some moments of silent detox, even if words had agonized in us when they failed to breathe laughter and stories.
But silent Love is an oxymoron. “Silence” does not match our belief that Love should be expressed in words, gestures and gifts. We keep on expressing Love that it seems so unimaginable to let Love go silent. Not to talk or to express seems unloving. We know that in people having years of sorrowful, silent estranged relationships with their lovers, spouses, parents or kids. We know that, despite being seated to each other, those fellow passengers are not part of who and why we Love simply because we do not know and talk to them. Love isn’t Love when it remains unexpressed.
Talking about silence, we only remember it in the stern hushing of our old school librarian pointing to the sterile sign board that says observe silence. I thought, How would you closely watch something that you cannot hear and see? I had some interesting moments during a meditation retreat I once attended. The teacher says, Let’s maintain noble silence. It’s part of the rules because it helps one to pay attention to his or her own thoughts, feelings and entire meditative experience. It’s noble because it leads you to a deeper silence that you may never had before.
But instead of having the sought-after silence, I heard my inner noises in those few days of not talking. Poisoned words buzzed in the corners of my mind: those negative and judgmental thoughts that run amok, along with the numbing of my legs and senses. Noble silence, therefore, was only silent in the outside. That requirement was for me to hear something else, one that is only audible to one’s soul.
When we again listened to silence, we found that Love has never left us, because Love is in itself what silence really is.
I live a life full of words: I read, I write, I speak. In my relationship, it goes multiplied. We breathe words, but at times they choke us, because we had forgotten one important act to let those words meditate: we forgot to listen. Ironic, for listen has the same words to spell silent. We forgot that Love, apart from the words that express it, is silent in its very ground. Love has always permeated us without any words, even in that period when we chose not to talk. When we again listened to silence, we found that Love has never left us, because Love is in itself what silence really is.
Those silent weeks between us ended when our loud egos finally calmed down. No recollection of blames and mistakes, only a sweet continuation of the Love we have always cherished. We begin again, and this time we are reminding each other to pay attention, to occasionally pause and be silent in moments we need, so we experience Love without any words but with so much energy of our Loving presence.
In those silent days, I began to learn more to listen to this silent Love, this hidden rhythm of our inner lives. It always teaches us to listen, even if we thought we only hear the pathetic noise of our realities. It is the silence that reverberates in our hearts. And in the heart of our hearts is the ear that constantly listen not to the words but to the wordless, not to the sounds but to the silence – the silence that connects us all. We must listen to it again.
