Why Are We Afraid of Silence?

Bebe Nicholson
5 min readOct 24, 2018
photo by Josh Adamsk on Unsplash

Imagine being in a room full of strangers and not being able to speak. Meals have to be eaten in silence. You’re not allowed to talk to your roommate. You can’t even say, “Pass the butter,” or “What’s your name and why are you here?”

This is exactly what my friend signed up for when she decided to attend a Silent Retreat; two full days of not speaking to anyone.

At first, I thought this sounded like a strange way to spend a weekend. But my friend said, “When you shut out the clamor of conversation, you stop focusing on what you’re going to say next or what kind of impression you might make on another person. Silence frees you to observe other people and the world around you without the interference of ego.”

“We’re really a society that’s afraid of silence,” she continued when I looked skeptical. “We feel like every pause in a conversation is a void we have to fill.”

I decided there was a lot of truth to what she said when I hosted a dinner party a few weeks later. There were eight of us, so the conversation went along pretty well. But if there was the slightest pause, someone always jumped in to save us from the threat of silence. Sometimes a speaker was only pausing long enough to gather her thoughts. Before she could take a deep breath and continue her story, the conversation got sidetracked by another person…

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Bebe Nicholson
Bebe Nicholson

Written by Bebe Nicholson

Writer, editor, publisher, journalist, author, columnist, believer in enjoying my journey and helping other people enjoy theirs. bknicholson@att.net

Responses (11)

What are your thoughts?

Terrific truth! I work so hard sometimes that the silence is supportive, wonderful to recognize — because when I’m heads down in a project, I have no idea what’s going on around me — and the silence is necessary…

When I visit my parents I go into their back bedroom and turn off the TV that they leave on all day, although they are usually in the living room not watching it. I never understood that. My in-laws leave their TV on all day also. I only turn on the…...

Several years ago I discovered the Quakers. Who worship in silence. Or near silence. There is still the sound of life around us, birds, wind, traffic, the odd gurgle of old pipes.
Every now and then someone speaks a ministry.
During discussions there…...