Silence

I am having a quiet day today.

After several days with strep throat, after just one day of antibiotic treatment, and after a terrible night of sleep that included a dream in which the insides of my throat—tonsils, uvula, vocal chords, the whole shebang—were gutted in surgery, I decided it was best to not speak for a day.

I don’t pretend to have any mystical knowledge about the power of being mute. It’s funny, though. Brooke has a book that our friend Jessie gave her that deals with activism and spirituality, and while many of the lessons come in Chicken Soup for the Soul-type parables, others are quite engaging and without the New Agey feel-your-energy-circles vibe. (I mean, the book is called The Spritual Activist: Practices to Transform Your Life, Your Work, and Your World. Wouldn’t “your life” or “your world” have covered it?) Several weeks ago she told me about the idea of the silent retreat, or a several-day journey into the soundlessness. No talking, no noise. Just silence at your beck and call.

When we talked about it, I thought it was a good idea. People need to let go of certain stresses—why shouldn’t verbal communication, stressful for many people, be one of them? But then Brooke read me a story about a Western man who was going whole hog on the silent treatment: He wasn’t going to speak for a whole year. Not to his coworkers. Not to his clients. Not to his family. No one. Just a lot of nods and smiles and gestures and scribbles. No three-foot library voice. No theater whisper. Nada.

It struck me as odd, and difficult. I imagined a guy in some cubicle at Ernst & Young preparing for a group brainstorming session or staying up late with his management team, shrugging his shoulders every time someone asked, “Bill, whattya think?” There’s no way it could last, at least not without a pink slip or two to stuff into hushed pockets along the way.

Today I finally read the story. In silence, no less. Not surprisingly, the one-year mute does not work in an office. Also not surprising is that he is yoga instructor—actually, he teaches something called Danskinetics, or a combo of dance, yoga, group interaction and aerobic workout, a mixture that defies even my most imaginative attempts at understanding—and that he sometimes goes by his Sanskrit name, Nateshvar. (His Christian name is Ken Scott. I’ve got nothing.)

But I’m not going to get down on our resident yoga instructor, er, Danskinesiologist. I think he’s onto something. Non-verbal communication enhances your other senses and certainly draws on your creativity. Today I also have been more productive, more interested in reading and writing and more thoughtful than I normally am in my day-to-day life here in Mérida. The problem with it all, of course, is that it’s a lonely game, non-verbal communication. There are about 6,000 languages spoken in the world today, a figure that doesn’t even include dialects. There are 200 languages with a million or more speakers. Twenty-seven of those have at least 50 million speakers. If you can speak English, you can communicate with 400 million people; if you can speak Spanish, too, you can talk with 371 million more.

If you don’t speak, and you don’t sign, and you don’t feel like writing much, then that leaves you a pretty small group of people with whom to communicate.

But ultimately, why am I writing all of this, aside from the fact that I’ve been quiet all day? Isn’t there something ironic about a silent person needing to tell a bunch of people that he’s not talking? Doesn’t that sort of defeat the purpose of being quiet? Maybe, although my initial reasoning was to avoid imaginary scalpels and sign-language classes.

While silence obviously hasn’t put off my rambling, or cleared up my thought process, a little bit of it might do wonders for you. So, shut up for once. Fake laryngitis. Use duct tape. Be quiet during lunch. Do it after dinner. Get all noiseless at the park. Go solo, or grab yourself a silent accomplice.

And while you’re at it, help me figure out how to teach group interaction while not talking. That’s been bothering me all day, Nateshvar.