October 8, 2006

  • Truth is.  And so is silence.  But is the truth ever just mere silence?  And is silence always the truth?

     

    There’s a great rudeness in this civilization of ours.  We either make noise to drown out the truth or we cling to a self-imposed silence to avoid speaking it.   We welcome public scandals because they reassure us that honesty has no incorruptible defenders even at the highest levels.  Yet we carry that ‘certain politeness’ around with us in our personal affairs that requires us not to speak the hard truth to a friend or acquaintance with whom we are having a falling out, but rather to spread ‘the unspoken’ as gossip behind those others’ backs.

     

    Death is.  And so is silence.  Death brings silence.  And, so also, does silence sometimes bring death.

     

    “Of that which we cannot speak, we must consign to silence,” advised the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

     

    Dear Ludwig, there is nothing we cannot speak of, if we put true heart to addressing it.  This does not mean that we should forever babble incessantly without sometimes shutting up and just listening to the world.  Shhh.   Really shhh.  And just listen.  What do you hear?   If all you hear is your own silence, you’re not listening to the cosmos spinning, infolding, unfolding.  It screeches cataclysmic destruction somewhere all the time even as it gently pelts ocean shores elsewhere with the susurrant lap upon lap of sloshing waters .  So listen truly to the world.  The living world might sometimes be little more than a hush but it is never-ever wholly voidly silent.  And when you learn of something that can assist the rest of us in living-surviving, in loving, in appreciating beauty or in observing its passing, then report back.

     

    May your silence always be a sign of your attentiveness to the wondrous flow of life.  Or an indication of a strict observance in avoidance of an imminent danger.  Or a matter of healing when words would tend otherwise to obstruct.  And never a closing of your heart in dreadful anticipation of unlife.  

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