How To Be Quiet
Silence is a lost art. Almost.
I came to realize this at 5:22pm on an overcast Tuesday.
Walking back to my car, I found myself amidst a swarm of chatty college students with their shiny new Motorola flip-phones walking to their shiny new Jettas, armed with unlimited any-time and a penchant for gossip.
Somebody's phone plays the Rocky theme, and everybody checks their pocket. Somebody laughs, everyone talks louder. Somebody says "What?", and the volume goes to 11. Its like interpretive dance, but for some reason I can't tell what they're getting at.
It didn't stop there. We've got the frat boys with lowered Escalades with the deafening exhaust and 4 10-inch subs in the back. We've got the police and fire sirens rushing to put out the oven fire at the Cholla apartments. Not to mention the car alarms, walk sign indicators, the airport five miles away, and 3, count 'em 3 construction sites on campus complete with the diesel front-end loaders and the lunch-horn that plays mariachi music for the workers come 12:30.
The list goes on, but I think you get the point. We live in a noisy world, at a time I've heard referred to as the "information age". Noisy in the auditory sense, but in many others as well. Radio, TV, Internet, all have become inundated with unimportant chatter that we've learned to just filter out. All this information our age touts is divided into convenient segments that can be sold in order to insert the fact that you should ask your doctor about Viagra. The detritus of the information age.
If you ask me, its getting a little out of hand. But what solution is there? Somebody has to pay the bills, and advertising is a pretty successful business. What's even causing this? Have we all stopped listening and just started screaming at the top of our lungs in order to be heard over the composite din? Where did it all go wrong?
For serious questions like this I turn to one of the best hard core metal bands I know: Killswitch Engage.
"It all must fall, it must end with us, it must end with me."
That's right. The problem is choice. Er, wait. No, the problem is us. Our chit-chatty selves.
Everybody loves to talk. Or rather, be heard. We love to make our point, to tell our story, to express ourselves using our most convenient form of communication at our disposal. Even I, the mild-mannered and dangerously quiet computer programmer, enjoy talking on occasion. As they say, we are "social creatures" by nature. You can't help it.
Or can you?
I believe so. I have to believe, or else I'm gonna end up buying an iPod and jack in whenever I have to walk anywhere. And that's just not right. Think: Human vocal chords were initially designed to communicate hunting strategies and locations of fertile soil. "You go there, I stay here, and the berries are particularly delicious, thank you URGKURK". So simple. Nothing like the garbled mess transmitted at 800Mhz like I described above.
Thus, I have compiled herein a list of steps you can take if you want to start on the path to a quieter, simpler life. I have them ordered in what I think is from least to most difficult, but feel free to excersize them in whatever order you see fit.
- Talk about what someone else wants to talk about -
Ok, so you've decided you need to talk a bit less. Maybe your parents decided to stop paying your overage charges. Maybe your vocal chords just need a break. Whatever your reason, you need to find a way to cut down on your arbitrary yakking. The first step is to realize that what you have to say might hold little to no interest to the opposite party. Taking this into account, try to talk about ONLY what they want to talk about. It might be difficult at first, but given another chatty individual you shouldn't have any trouble. This will develop your listening skills, as well as show you exactly the kind of monster you're up against in the war on gabbing.
- Avoid sentence bloat -
This might sound kind of funny, but hear me out. Our goal is to cut down on verbal expression. For some people this goes against their very being. They just can't cope without somehow opening their mouths. Like long distance runners, they get a kind of natural high from talking. And that is the hardest thing to break yourself from. For these people every little bit helps. Thus, I propose to make a small change to your speech patterns. The human brain is an extremely adaptive thinking machine, and as one has the uncanny ability to interpet speech. Not only this, but given practice, we can learn to fill in the holes when people drop words or mispronounce them. If we didn't, we'd still have British accents and use "bloody" instead of today's plethora of interesting expletives. Given this, we have an opportunity to cut the proverbial fat from our daily conversations. Most people, when listening, only pick out the important words, the nouns, the verbs, and maybe whether you're talking past, present, or future. The rest is just dressing to avoid ambiguity. Why not meet them in the middle? Instead of "Do you want to go to a movie?", you can instead say "Want to go to a movie?". English is full of useless and unnecessary words like "do" and "that". If you can learn to avoid their usage then you are well on your way to living a quieter, happier life.
- Learn to communciate non-verbally -
Entire conversations can be had using facial expression and hand gestures. The occasional grunt of acknowledgement might also be necessary, but use with caution as it might warrant further elaboration. Particularly useful in the multitude of facial expressions is the skillful use of the eyebrows. Think Spock. If not Spock, then definitely Sean Connery. Doubtful, befuddled, quizzical,
thoughtful...all with the raising of an eyebrow. But note, your expression manifest is halved when you can only operate your eyebrows as a single unit. Practice in the mirror to single out one of them. If you're feeling particularly zealous, go for asynchronous usage and impress people at parties.
- Listen -
The most difficult but also most important part of being quiet is being able tolisten. You can just sit and hear somebody talking, maybe pick up on where to says "yeah" or "uh-huh" or "well, that's how it goes", but you are by no means benefitting from the conversation. People talk about what they think is important. Perhaps you might disagree, but it is better to understand why it is important to them than to just find a way to agree or disagree. Conquer this, and you'll have conquered a lot more than just being quiet.
So there you have it. In just 4 easy steps you too can take the steps to make the world a quieter place.
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I wrote this Chronicle as a kind of mockery of some of the motivational literature I've been reading lately. Not to say any of it is bad, but more of an excersize for myself than anything.
Originally there were only 3 steps, with "Listen" added late one Thursday night. Of the 4, I'd have to say that that is the one I'd have to be serious about.
It is for this that I say silence is an art. And possibly a lost one at that. When was the last time you were able to sit in a room with someone and not experience an uncomfortable silence? Does anyone in our daily dance of pretense even understand someone else enough to do so?
Or are we all just waiting for our turn to talk?
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