Silence is Golden: Is It Really?

Before the movie begins, we see the words “Silence is golden.” Ironic since we are about to enter into something loud, entertaining, and not at all silent—a distraction. We live to make sure there is anything but silence in our lives, yet silence is considered to be one of the great spiritual disciplines (as well as one of the greatly avoided ones).

Before the movie begins, we see the words “Silence is golden.” Ironic since we are about to enter into something loud, entertaining, and not at all silent—a distraction. We live to make sure there is anything but silence in our lives, yet silence is considered to be one of the great spiritual disciplines (as well as one of the greatly avoided ones).

Consider this quote from Roy Walsh, psychiatry professor quoted in the book The Search for Meaning:

Basically our lives are, to a large extent, spent in avoiding confrontation with ourselves. And then you can begin to make sense of the enormous amount of our culture’s daily activities, which attempt to distract us from ourselves, from deep reflection, from deep thinking, from existential confrontation. There’s a wonderful phrase by the philosopher Kierkegaard, “tranquilization by the trivial.” I think our culture has mastered this better than any culture in history, simply because we have the wealth and means to do so.

Why is silence so hard? Part of the reason is because we’ve been programmed to do, do, do and find our worth in what we do. People applaud our actions, but not so many applaud our being. How often do people say, “I’m glad you’re here,” and leave it at that? Usually that phrase is followed up with the reason they’re glad you just walked in the door—typically they’ve got something for you to do. So, sitting in silence is a waste of time. There’s so much to do, so let’s not just sit around.

The other part of the reason is found in the quote above. Silence would cause us to slow down and listen to ourselves and God. We’d rather avoid realizing all the swirling that’s going on in our own head. We don’t want to confront that we are a mess inside and out, and there’s actually nothing we can do about that. No self-help book can fix that we just need God.

Instead of being silent, we swoop and swirl bumping into people without seeing them, even in our own home. We look in the mirror and can’t even see ourselves (there’s a Bible verse in there somewhere). Better yet, let’s not even look at the mirror; let’s look at the movies, tv, internet, anything but ourselves.

The answer is simple (isn’t it always?), but undesired by most. We just simply need to add a little silence to our lives. Turn off all the noise, and then listen to the noise inside. I promise if you keep working on finding that inner silence, it will start to come and the peace that passes understanding will also find you too. Silence really is golden. Let’s start treating like it’s worth what it actually is.