We spend all of our lives filling every empty space: every house with furniture, every pore with makeup, and every moment with action. Everything considered vacant in and outside our own selves is uncomfortable because it forces us to look within ourselves. When there is nothing to listen to but your own thoughts, no place to be except inside yourself, nothing to see but your own reflection. When all the lights fade away and the music ceases to torment our senses, we inevitably search for what’s next. And when there is nothing else, all that is left is to look inside. It’s curious: we run away from ourselves, like animals run away from their ever-present shadows. Have we reverted back to fundamental instincts? Or did we never really leave them behind? 

Truth is scary. That’s a universal fact. But why should we be scared of it? Most of the time lying acts as a self-preservation measure. As George Petties once said, “So long as I know it not, it hurteth me not”. Inside every one of us, there are ugly truths we don’t always want to know. This phenomenon has a name: superficiality. It leads us to having an empty mind and soul; it evidences our faults even more while trying to hide them. We talk but don’t think. We buy and don’t see. When will we ever understand? The answer is not outside. Again and again, we fill ourselves up to the brim with empty and material solutions. Will we ever be fulfilled? 

Truth is, we hate silence because it makes us visible. It uncovers what we avoid. When no one is speaking, there is nothing to hide us: no clever phrase, no funny story or fast response to show how quick you are. The long, tall words we say hide us no more. And everyone sees who we are. Our emptiness is evidenced, and now all who see you see the nothingness you are. Silence is the mirror held uncomfortably close to your face. Silence might narrate us, so we choose to narrate it. You comment on the weather, the music, the awkwardness itself. You turn pauses into jokes. We may call it charisma or confidence, but sometimes it is just fear hiding behind struts and boldness. We claim to hate awkward silence, but it isn’t silence we fear. What we really hate is the possibility that someone might look at us, really look, and find nothing.  

And yet, when we stop, does the world ever come to an end? Do we lose everyone we love, do we die? Quite the opposite, in fact. People tend to lean in. They wait. Because sometimes a silent moment can reveal something deeper that our rehearsed stories could ever imitate. The flaws, honesty, the humanity in our interactions are all gifts from silence. 

It is not an accusation, nor a verdict. It is space, space that allows ideas to grow instead of stuffing them in a two-minute conversation. Somewhere thoughts stretch without being interrupted. They float and go far away, then come back enriched with what they learned. They teach us what others teach them, and we cease to be superficial. Silence is where someone might choose to speak not out of an obligation but rather because of intention. We fill every silence because we fear ourselves. But let’s not just be- let’s embrace our truths, our goods and bads, ourselves. 

Silence is not empty- it is full. Full of what words are too superficial to carry. 

Why do we feel the need to fill every silence with words? 

What would happen if we let silence speak first?