Thought for the Day - Words and Silences

 Are words the best way to communicate? Or is there something more to communication? How do we interpret silences? How do we communicate?

It's a classic debate. Words versus silences. 

To me words are the basic tools we have to be understood on a transactional level. We agree that these words mean the same things and we proceed on that assumption. It works very well at that level. At a transactional level, we also give words great importance because is almost like a contract. Though we feel differently and have different intentions, we will use words to find peace.

But then at a deeper level, words are limiting. Simply because they cannot fully capture any experience completely. We can only experience deep emotion - we can never fully express it. When we do try, we somehow limit the experience. We somehow get caught in the popular understanding of the word and that can take away from the experience. That way, our inadequacy to express exactly what we feel, also misleads the entire flow of information.

Then there are silences. No one knows what they mean because nothing is said. But at a deep, deep level we do know. Beyond transactional, we can always trust our instinct to know, to feel, to understand the silence. Most people say something and mean something else - which means they use words as a smoke screen to hide their real feelings. If we go with their words we are going up the wrong path. The real thing here is the feeling because we can never do it the other way i.e. use feelings to hide words. No, it's always words that are used to hide feelings. So we need to go beyond words, beyond their literal meaning and into the feeling space to understand. Silence is a language too.

Words can only go that far. Beyond words, there is an even bigger creative space - silence.