When Silence is a Constrictor
I am a Librarian. I spend the better part of my day with my index finger to my lips, mouthing the quintessential Shhhhh.
I am a teacher, unable to instruct my students until that hush falls over the room.
I am a writer. I craft writing rooms and secret spaces in which stillness is of the utmost priority. With stillness comes silence. Only then, can I create.
I am a photographer, requiring silence in order to focus my lens and my thoughts.
I am a daughter, often in favor of silent bliss.
I am a student of the world — a practitioner of silence — hoping the answers I seek might reach me if I listen closely enough.
I am a friend— a partner — the only position in which silence can feel deafening, even asphyxiating, like a boa constrictor wrapped ‘round the throat —the only position in which I fear silence.
How is it that my cherished silence —
silence that I would travel to the ends of the earth to obtain —
could take on such a negative connotation?
How is it that silence could have the capacity to sound my alarm bells so mercilessly?
How is it that silence could cause me to feel so unsettled?
When I am the one seeking silence, I welcome it. When silence feels thrust upon me, my perspective changes entirely.
Clearly, I am not talking about the beautiful, comfortable silence that can exist between two people.
I speak instead of the proverbial awkward silence that breeds uncertainty —
that down to the core of your being something feels off and you can’t quite put your finger on it —
silence.
That uncharacteristic,
sudden strain where there once was none,
silence —
because the mood is disconnected, and for a woman who thrives on intimate connection —
who is healed by intimate connection —
it is just too hard to sit in that disconnected mood.
We keep on playing these mind games together. -John Lennon
So simple, yet so poignant.
Every level of human interaction involves some sort of head game. What good is life if taken too seriously? Shouldn’t we just let live?
Sure, the intention is there to simply let live. But it is hard to take silence anything but seriously.
Sudden, blank silence: one facet of the mind game. Wait a minute…. game?
What comes to mind when you hear the word?
Scrabble. Twister. Jenga. Monopoly. Guess Who? Chess. Checkers. Clue. Pictionary. Trivial Pursuit. Connect Four. Dominoes. Mahjong. Bridge. Candyland. Life.
Aren’t these games?
Games, with their straightforward winners and losers — providers of the leisurely escape.
They come with a rule book for play. Directions are spelled out. With time-tested boxes, sets, and pieces, we can rely on them to be played the same way. Games are fun to engage in and can easily be put into storage when the mood fades.
Unfortunately and unbeknownst to ourselves, we all adopt another sort of game that we never really grow out of: the mind game. But most of us do not even know we are engaged in mind game-play until someone calls us on it — if they call us on it.
Where board games are time-honored traditions, mind games are fickle little things capable of changing from dawn to dusk.
When we begin playing a board game, we more or less know what we are getting ourselves into. The directions help with that.
Mind games either have no rules, or they bend the rules to the point where the rules become indistinguishable.
Mind games generally have someone on the losing end or, more fittingly put, someone feeling left out. Without a rule book to guide, how could play ever be fair?
I propose the creation of a new game —
a game focused only on the furthering of trust and belief —
designed to strengthen our ability to share, not hinder it.
Would we call it Honesty, or maybe Vulnerability?
I promise it will be easy, like Twister —
more fun than a Barrel of Monkeys!
It will provide more excitement than property-buying at Monopoly — certainly, no small pieces to have to keep track of.
Similar to Truth or Dare, you might find yourself baring your soul. But the dares will make it worth your while.
The best part of all?
No guesswork is required.
No proclamations of: It was Ms. DeStefano in the Library with the Thesaurus!
or despondent exclamations of You sank my battleship!
Ok, so I threw that one in there for comedic effect.
We need only
play it the way that we feel it,
and trust in our actions or rather, our moves.
We need to be willing to share what we need from each other.
We need to be able to ask for it.
Otherwise, how can we ever get it?
We are not mere fascinations. We are people with hidden depths and mysteries to be explored. But we have been so conditioned to bottle-up our feelings — to hold our feelings hostage — which results in unintentional mind tricks, subtle hints, and the stop-and-go —
which can be hard for the other player.
Honesty requires players to say what they mean, and to mean what they say.
If the players want each other, they say it. They don’t make it a mystery that only Nancy Drew herself seems capable of solving. If they don’t want each other — or if they are no longer feeling it — they speak openly about that, too.
Gone is the fear of sudden, blank silence because there is no such thing as a difficult conversation. Players recognize that conversations are what move them forward in their understanding of each other.
With enhanced communication as priority, players are free to sit back (or lie back) and enjoy the sensual ride of game-play.
So won’t you pull up a chair next to me, or would you rather we play on the bedspread?
We owe it to ourselves to play honestly at Honesty. The one caveat? There are no do-overs, no resets of the board in this game called Life.
I mean…. Honesty!
