The Sound of Silence

"The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said."

~ Peter Drucker

The Sound of Silence

I was twelve, standing at the barre in ballet class, when Mrs. Koth, our teacher, told me in that high-pitched British accent of hers that my posture was off and my form was sloppy, and she said it in front of everyone. Ugh!

I hated being wrong. I hated being wrong out loud even more, in a room full of girls I'd be dancing next to every week for the rest of the year. Never mind that she had every reason to say something, and that every one of us had been called out at one time or another. She was my teacher after all, that was her job. I didn't hear the correction. I heard the exposure and felt the embarrassment.

So I did what I always did when things got uncomfortable. I clammed up, went silent. I finished class going through the motions, arms in the right places, eyes somewhere else, counting the minutes until I could leave.

The silence didn't stay at the studio. Nope, it got in the car and came home with me and sat down at the dinner table, and it did not eat. When I was asked what was wrong, I said nothing was wrong. What was I supposed to say, that I hadn't performed well and a woman with a shrill British accent had told me so in front of everyone? Not a chance. And when they went about their business as if I wasn’t there, I became even quieter because I didn’t exactly receive the outcome I'd expected.

What was I looking for? Some sort of compassion? An apology? And, for what? Something that was said and I took offense? Was I expecting someone else to manage my emotions? Apparently so.

That pattern of going radio silent didn't stay contained to a dance studio or a dinner table. It grew up right along with me and followed me into every relationship that ever mattered, making itself right at home like it had been invited. I retired the leotard decades ago. The silence, apparently, had other plans.

I've come to see how this particular habit creeps into so many relationships, and how at the root of it, every single time, is the same thing. Control.

I'm hardly the only one who learned this. Mrs. Koth would have had her hands full correcting all of us for it, because most of us pick up some version of the same lesson somewhere along the way, that silence looks like composure when really it's just poor form wearing a nicer outfit.

Watch a room long enough and you'll see it everywhere, not only in dance studios or dining rooms but in the ordinary, unremarkable spaces where two people who care about each other decide that saying nothing is safer than saying the true thing. It rarely looks dramatic. It looks like someone going still mid-conversation. It looks like a subject that gets changed instead of finished. It looks like two people occupying the same room, each one certain the other is the unreasonable one.

It took me the better part of a lifetime to understand that standing up straight was never really about the shoulders. Mrs. Koth wasn't only correcting my posture. She was teaching me, without either of us knowing it yet, that good posture and honest communication ask the same thing of a person, hold your ground, stay upright, and don't collapse the moment something gets uncomfortable. Speaking the true thing, even when it comes out clumsy, even when the words aren't the right ones, is better form than perfectly, practiced silence ever was.

I still catch myself wanting to go quiet. Old habits, it turns out, know the choreography as well as I do. But I've learned to notice the moment it starts and ask myself what I'm actually trying to control by saying nothing at all. There's a real difference between taking a breath and closing a door, and most of us stopped noticing which one we were doing a long time ago. So much of what we call keeping the peace is really just two people agreeing, without a word, not to look at what's actually there.

Love and Light,

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