Life long learning to be silent

Life long learning to be silent

“It took years to learn to speak and a life long to be silent.”

With these words the famous writer Ernest Hemingway, a master of words, brings it to the point what nonverbal communication is about.

It takes a bit longer than two years for a child to learn to speak, Hemingway’s focus is true.

Mankind belongs to the speaking and reflection species of nature. This is connected with the competence ……………..to reflect even about oneself. But this doesn’t mean that being able to speak, to express with words would be the king’s track of communication.

Of course I will not renounce of the competence to exchange words with others and to be together with them. Of course I’ll not renounce of the human capacity to reflex and put these reflections into words

And thus there is an important essence in silence, in that which is not said, in that what could never be said and should not be said, an essence which makes digestion of words possible.

How to we learn the high art of communication? I remember well a training in rhetoric which I joined about 30 years ago. There we were taught the art to make a pause while speaking or lecturing or presenting. I really remember well what this means in my body-psychotherapy encounters when we work on that what is called in psychology the non-consciousness. This refers to aspects in life which never can be brought to consciousness, so never could be put into words.

Perhaps we should follow with our competition of life what the big musician Mozart once said. He was convinced that the space between the notes is as important as the notes themselves.