Secret #4 – Communication - Silence

Ecclesiastics 3: 7b: “a time to keep silence and a time to speak”

“Silence is also speech.”(Proverb quote)

“Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.” Marcus Tullius Cicero

All too often we believe that our point is best made when we say or write something; however, “there are times when silence has the loudest voice.” (Leroy Brownlow)

Did you ever have the pleasure of doing the wrong thing for which you expected discipline and your mother or father was silent? Remember how effective that was? Well I do…I just wish I could replicate that quality of silence in my everyday life.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause. (Mark Twain)

“As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence” (Benjamin Franklin). Now there is a time to speak and a time to be silent just like Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 3:7b…wisdom is know the right time for either. Too many times (as my husband points out), I’m silent when I should speak up and, you guessed right, speak when I don’t necessarily need to.

Now, when you see or know of someone doing the wrong thing or going the wrong way, you have a “responsibility” to speak up. Ok…let me backtrack…for instance, what would you do if a child is about to harm himself/herself? “Speak up” if not even “shout out”. What of when a full grown adult is on the verge of taking a “wrong” decision that will change the course of his/her life forever? You’re right again - “speak up”. So what if this is a choice between which colour of outfit to wear to a black and white tie event? No, not quite the same answer…the answer here is “it depends”. We could go on and on with hypothetical situations. The bottom line is: “You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say.” (Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.)

Let me quickly add that: It is a great thing to know the season for speech and the season for silence (Seneca) because “once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.” (Horace)

“The difference between a smart man and a wise man is that a smart man knows what to say, a wise man knows whether or not to say it.” (Frank M. Garafola). Indeed “Silence is a fence around wisdom” (German Proverb)

My advice: “Don't speak unless you can improve on the silence” (Spanish Proverb)