The articulation of silence

Our Grandfather believed in the Shakespeare’s adage from ‘Much ado about nothing,’ which goes ‘‘Silence is the perfectest herald of joy”. During summer holidays when the cacophony of his grandchildren reaches a crescendo, he assembles all of us for story time as part of his noise reduction tactics. One of his stories about the virtue of silence has stayed with me over the years. 

An aged couple started preparing their home to receive their grandchildren by cleaning, sprucing up the garden, shopping for the children’s favourite food, clothes and all. During these hectic activity the old man had misplaced his treasured watch. When the kids arrived and after settling down, his granddaughter noticed that Grandpa was not wearing his watch. Grandpa said with a slight gloom, “Never mind little girl, I misplaced the watch while cleaning the house. It will show up somewhere soon”. The grandchildren were not convinced. They know it’s his favourite watch and they have always seen the watch adoring his left wrist. They said in chorus that they are going to find the watch for him. After looking here and there one of the kids asked him, “Grandpa, do you remember when you saw the watch last”. Grandpa thought about it and said, “May be I had seen it last while sprucing up the garage”. The children went to the garage en masse to look for the watch. There were many things stacked there like waste materials, broken pipes, old books, scraps and so on. Suddenly one of the kids called out to the others, “I have an idea, let’s close the garage door and sit here and observe complete silence, if the watch is here, it will reveal itself.” Although the other kids were surprised, they went along with the suggestion and sat there in complete silence. Then they could hear the tic, tic sound coming from one of the shelves. Carefully they peeled back the stored stuff and found the watch.

I guess my grandfather tried to teach us through the story that silence is a state which enhances the quality of being. Science too indicates that two hours of silence daily leads to the development of new cells in the hippocampus region which is linked to learning, memory, and emotions. Rumi, the Persian Sufi mystic and poet eloquently states, ‘Let soul speak with the silent articulation of a face’.