The Power of Silence

Silence, in all its forms, can be one of the most destructive forces in existence. It is a perplexing dichotomy--a perfect marriage of two opposing effects elicited from the same catalytic source. Silence can heal and silence can kill: it can condemn and absolve. It can provide for moments of contemplative introspection or it can feel like the weight of the world.

I have been reflecting upon the power of silence lately because I have encountered it in numerous forms. There are people I was once close with with whom I will likely never speak again. This type of long-term silence is at once enervating and invigorating. I have been the victim of the so-called silent treatment before and know all too well the pain that being shunned brings with it but, unexpectedly, the same circumstance with different people can bring about an entirely different response. By shedding these negative influences from my life I feel free--as if I have been liberated by the shackles of the past. This seemingly simple silence has washed away the poison that festered in my heart allowing me to look forward to the future; it has rendered me cancer-free in a mental and emotional sense.

Silence certainly has its healing properties. I love my kids more than anything but there is certainly a yearning for a few moments of solitude by the end of the day. There is a peacefulness that accompanies the bedtime rituals--calm and quiet to help whisk them away to the land of dreams. Then, in the tranquil time that ensues, the silence that fills the house is restorative and rejuvenating--replenishing my patience and energy for the next day.

Silence is integral to music as well oftentimes offering as much in the way of musical meaning as rhythm and melody; rests can fill sonic space in a way that no number of notes or chords ever could. It provides a sense of anticipation and can be the source of the heaviest moment in a heavy song or the darkest, most ominous one in a dark tune. Two of my favorite examples come from songs from the late '90s/early '00s. If you listen from 2:25 to 2:52 on Incubus' Pardon Me, you'll see that the dip in volume and that brief silence before the final chorus renders the closing section all the more powerful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhZvDJ2opsM

The frenetic, upbeat tempo of the Foo Fighters' tune Monkey Wrench has a similar moment of anticipation built in to the end of the intro:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKp5v588-Vs

Still, there is a dark side to silence--one that, in many ways, overshadows its positive aspects. Social silence can be demeaning whether it occurs in person or digitally. I know this type of silence doesn't bother some people but it absolutely infuriates me because of the implied denigration. Picture yourself sitting at a table with friends. The group is carrying on a conversation with each member participating in turn though in no particular order. You offer up an observation or a quip...a moment of silence ensues...and the conversation carries on as if you never spoke. How does that make you feel? For me, that act of dismissal is one of the most derogatory things that can happen in a social setting. I'd be less offended by someone telling me off to my face with a string of colorful expletives than I would someone completely ignoring something that I said.

Silence often reminds us of loss and conflict. Parents fighting and yelling undeniably has a negative impact on children but how much worse is it to live amid the tension that comes with icy silence between one's parents? Silence is what often fills the room as one awaits test results in a doctor's office...and what comes from the other end of the phone line when bad news is delivered.

Victims of abuse are often shamed into silence; when many do find the courage to speak up, they are either met with silence or told to keep quiet (at least at many, many institutions of higher education where the cash cow sports teams matter more than victims' rights). Lying by omission is by its very definition the act of remaining silent to suppress the truth--ethical elision at its finest. When people fail to speak up in defense of another or when they fail to correct an egregious error their silence can have a far-reaching impact.
 
The most poignant destructive distinction of silence though comes with the assumptions that we seem compelled to draw when we encounter it socially. How many quiet girls who abstain from friendly communication get dubbed bitchy or priggish--snobs who think they're too good to talk to others simply by the act of keeping quiet? I met a few including my wife in college who were unjustly and improperly judged and who suffered as a result of these specious suppositions levied upon them; they were wallflowers assumed to be elitist divas.

Young children, too, are forced to bear the burden of their verbal reticence. How many kids respond with silence to well-meaning adults who try to engage them in conversation and are then questioned as to their mental faculties? They can't merely be shy or simply not in the mood to speak with a stranger--no no, instead, there "must be something wrong with them."

This assessment of cognitive capabilities is the one that I find most troubling and the one that has occupied my mind the most of late. For many native-born Americans there is this bizarre connection that is drawn between silence and intellectual function. How many folks see an immigrant who doesn't speak English--regardless of race, mind you--and automatically assume that, because of their silence in responding to questions, that they are intellectually inferior or even mentally retarded? How many of these supposed imbeciles, in turn, were professionals of distinction in their home countries? Doctors, lawyers, engineers? How many mocking epithets were hurled at these people especially as children by their classmates?

I spent almost a half an hour on Tuesday night speaking with the father of one of my son's flag football teammates. He speaks English fluently but has enough of an accent that I suspected that he emigrated from elsewhere; what I couldn't have predicted was the magnitude of his actual life story. Having already served in a war as a native son of Montenegro, he decided to exile himself from his homeland when he was recruited to engage in the Yugoslavian conflict of the early 1990s. He engaged in a harrowing journey that took him first to Germany, then to Mexico, and, ultimately, across the border and into the United States where he had family awaiting him.

He came to New York City without speaking or understanding a word of English. He lived first in Brooklyn and then in Staten Island, working and going to school to provide for himself and his family, spending his spare moments engaged in labor as opposed to the sports and games that his neighbors enjoyed. He taught himself English, worked his way through his adolescence, and ultimately came to be in charge of a significant construction company. He now provides for several children of his own giving them all of the things that he never had and shielding them from the atrocities that he endured all for the sake of their own peaceful existences. He does so in silence, never burdening them with the pain that marred his early life.

I thought of him earlier today when I was at the doctor's office with my son. I watched a white woman explaining to a Hispanic man the paperwork and procedures that he needed to fill out before his son could be seen. It was obvious that he didn't speak English and didn't understand most of what she said--particularly in the way he and his wife proceeded to pore over the paperwork like a test given in a foreign language (which, in a way, is precisely what it was). Meanwhile, she's holding their baby and trying to comfort their older son who is in a cast and still with a hospital bracelet around his wrist, wincing every few seconds as tears of pain sprang to his eyes.

I thought of my own recent ordeal with my son--the time spent at the hospitals and the slew of assorted doctor's visits that we've endured. I thought of how draining it has been for us and then I thought of that man and his family. Can you imagine how much worse it must be to go through those things--emergency room visits, ambulance rides--doctors and nurses trying to explain things to you while your child is suffering in pain...and not understanding most of what they are saying? Responding, more often than not, with silence?

Don't get me wrong--I am a firm believer that anyone who wants to live here should, at some point, learn English. I understand how incredibly difficult it is for older folks who make their way here but at the same time I also believe that it is the single most important thing that an immigrant can do. If I decided to move to France, Spain, or the Middle East then I would be damn sure to work as hard as I could to learn to speak the respective languages. Often the burden is laid upon the children of immigrants to be the translators and go-betweens and I'm sure that in at least some of those instances it's not for a lack of trying on the parts of the parents.

With that said, there's clearly a learning curve involved--one that has nothing to do with intellectual faculties. I think of Gonzalo Le Batard--one of my favorite sports entertainment personalities. He fled Cuba and was able to build a life for his wife and two sons in Florida while so many of his relatives remained trapped in Castro's time capsule. One glance at the Tweets and Facebook comments written about him tells you everything you need to know about the perception towards non-native English speakers in this country. Mr. Le Batard is fluent in English but clearly picked it up as a second language. How many people listen to him speak and think that he is unintelligent or mentally defective? How many people know that he was an engineer in Cuba? That he came here and earned an American engineering degree in his second language?

Think about that for a second. This man, who is routinely derided and called stupid (or worse) did something that many native-born Americans can't do...in his weaker language? If you have a four year or specialized degree then can you imagine going to school in a different country and earning that same degree in a second language that you didn't even learn until you were an adult?

The closest experiences I have come from trips I took to Puerto Rico and Ireland. Puerto Rico was the first country I've ever gone to where English wasn't the dominant language spoken or written in and even then it's still a part of the United States! I remember wanting to take photographs at the capitol building in San Juan and not being sure if I was allowed to. I used my piss-poor gringo Spanish to ask a security guard if it was okay and I barely understood what she said in response...so I nodded and smiled. She nodded and smiled quietly in return, giving me a thumbs up. She might've been giving me the approval for the photos or maybe she thought there was something wrong with the grown man with the childlike Spanish pronunciation; another silent gulf.

As apprehensive as I was in Puerto Rico, it was even worse in Ireland, if you can believe it. I mean, we are talking about a place where the people not only speak the same language as me and enjoy a nearly identical cultural background as me--they even look exactly like me! And yet, it was my first time being in what was, to me, a faraway, foreign country. The language wasn't so much an issue as the customs were. I didn't think of it until my wife and I left the hotel to head into Dublin and had to get on the bus. I realized that I had no idea how the bus worked. I knew that it would be easy enough to ask...but I was afraid of looking stupid.

I was in a place that was as close to being identical to home as it could be and still be different--the closest thing to a foreign comfort zone as possible...and I was still petrified of being judged and ridiculed. It made me think of the few foreign students I encountered as a student growing up in Brooklyn. I remember the abuse they took and I can only imagine the effect it had on them.

I think now again of the father of the boy on my son's flag football team. Can you picture yourself as a child and him suddenly showing up in your elementary school class? The new kid who stares blankly at the teacher--unresponsive when prompted for an answer? Who blinks and nods instead of speaking up? Can you imagine the fear that he must have felt--not wanting to be made fun of, not wanting to be thought of as stupid for the way he spoke or for his lack of understanding of an utterly foreign language? Can you picture the other kids laughing at him? The names they must have called him? A boy who wanted nothing more than a better shot at life than he had back home.

There is an alarming lack of empathy that is exhibited by people when it comes to immigrants. These people are presumed to be something that they are not and it sickens me; it also stems from one simple experiential factor: those who sit in judgment have never been put in a similar situation. I would be shocked if any of them have found themselves in a foreign country where they didn't speak the language and were forced to engage in daily functions with absolutely no help and then still had the gall to judge the immigrants who come here seeking a better life. Would you be able to muster up the courage to work shitty, low-paying jobs to give your kids a chance that literally millions of people take for granted--one that they have never given a second thought throughout their entire lives? Would you be able to be that kid--the one who gets laughed at and picked on because he or she dresses differently and doesn't speak the language correctly if at all? That teenager whose entire life has been uprooted suddenly in a place that might as well be an alien world? That feeling of awkwardness and wanting desperately to fit in but being utterly incapable of doing so?

Do you know what the answer most often is to these questions when I pose them to folks who barely interact with people of other cultures--particularly those who came here from somewhere else? The single most common response?



Silence.