WILDERNESS SILENCE
Most friendships among girls, and older people, too, suggest that if
there is one thing which is hated, it is silence. If silence does happen
to get in among us in camp, how uneasy we are! After an awkward pause we
all begin to talk at once,--any, every topic will serve to break the
hush which has fallen upon us. And if we don’t succeed in getting rid of
this silence--something apparently to be regarded as unfriendly and
ominous--we make excuse to do something and do it.
But of silence Maurice Maeterlinck, the great Belgian author of “The
Bluebird” and of many other plays, too, says that we talk only in the
hours in which we do not live or do not wish to know our friends or feel
ourselves at a great distance from reality. But where do we live more
truly than in our camp life? Then he goes on to say what I think is
equally true: That we are very jealous of silence, for even the most
imprudent among us will not be silent with the first comer, some
instinct telling us that it is dangerous to be silent with one whom we
do not wish to know or for whom we do not care or do not trust.
Let us admit at the very beginning that one does well to be on one’s
guard with the people with whom one does not care to be silent,--but one
does not go camping with those people,--or, as the case may be, if we,
ourselves, have a guilty conscience or an empty head much talking serves
its ends. And there is another situation in which it seems almost
impossible to be silent. There is someone for whom we have cared very
much. Things have changed, there has been a misunderstanding, we have
altered or someone else has made trouble between us. And the first
thing we notice is that we no longer dare to be silent together. Speech
must be made to cover up our common lack of sympathy. We talk, how we
talk,--anything, everything! Even when we are happy we run to places
where there is no silence, but now, if only we can be as noisy as
children and avoid the truth of the sad thing which has happened to us!
Again, let us admit at once that there are different kinds of silence:
There is a bitter silence which is the silence of hate, and another
which is that of evil thoughts, and a hostile silence, and a silence
which may mean the beginning of a storm or a fierce warfare. But the
only silence worth having is friendly and it is of that we need to
think, and it is that we can have by the camp fire in our wilderness
life.
Isn’t it true after all that the question which most of us ought to ask
ourselves seriously is not how many times we have talked but how many
times we have been silent. Sometimes one wonders whether we are ever
still and whether if we are to be silent, it is not a lesson which must
be learned all over again. How many times have we talked in a single
day? We can’t tell, for the number of times is so great that we can’t
count them. And the times we have been silent? And I don’t mean how many
times we have said nothing. To say nothing is not necessarily to be
silent. Well, we can’t count the times we have been silent either, but
that is because we haven’t been still at all. Yet there is a big life in
which there is no speech and no need of it. Are we never to give
ourselves a chance to live that?
Do you remember your first great silence? Was it going away from someone
you loved? Perhaps it was a joyous visit to your grandmother or to an
aunt or to see a friend, but it meant leaving your mother and you had
never left her before. Or maybe it was your first year at boarding
school or your freshman year at college. Do you remember the silence
that came over you then and all that filled it? And do you remember how
it wore away but gradually--that grip the stillness had within you and
upon you? You know now that that first silence will never be forgotten.
Or was it a return to those you loved and you realized as never before
how incomparably dear these people were to you and that only silence
could express that dearness? Or was it the silence of a crowd--awe
inspiring silence which foretells the acclaim of some great event of
happiness or a cry of woe? Or the silence of the wilderness as you
looked down from a mountain side into some great valley of lakes? Or was
it the death of someone you loved, and the silence that overcame you
forced you not only to suffer as never before but also to think as you
have never done about the meaning of life?
In that first great silence how many things that are precious revealed
themselves to us. There was love; we did not realize how it was woven
into every fibre of our lives; there was companionship; we did not
realize how bitterly hard it would be to forego it; there was new
experience; till it came we could not have known how much a part of our
lives the old experience was. How many things in us that had been asleep
were suddenly awakened! How much was that great silence worth to us then
and now? Perhaps an unhappy or stricken silence we called it then; but
even if it meant death or separation was it after all completely
unhappy? Have we taken into account the wealth of conviction, of
deepened experience, of increased love it brought us? Could anything so
rich be in any true sense unhappy?
“Silence, the Great Empire of Silence,” cried Carlyle, “higher than the
stars, deeper than the Kingdom of Death.” The world needs silent men but
even more, I think, does it need silent women. Carlyle--and you should
get what you can of his books and read them--calls silent men the salt
of the earth. Might not silent women or silent girls be called double
salt? He says that the world without such men is like a tree without
roots. To such a tree there will be no leaves and no shade; to such a
tree there will be no growth; a tree without roots cannot hold the
moisture that is in the earth and it will soon fade, soon dry up and let
everything else around it dry up, too.
Have you not heard women and girls with an incessant silly giggle or a
titter or a laugh that meant just nothing at all and yet which was
heard, like the dry rattle of the locust, morning, noon and night?
Nervousness partially; empty-headedness maybe, or a mistaken idea of
what is attractive. Silliness of that kind has no place in camp. Nothing
is more wearying, more lacking in self-control than such a manner,
nothing so exhausts other people. Such giggling or laughing or silly
talking is to the mind what St. Vitus’s dance is to the body--an
affliction to be endured perhaps but certainly not an attraction and not
to be cultivated.
Is it not silence that opens the door to our best work? How about that
work you enjoyed so much and did so well? How did you prepare for that?
Yes, I know all about the work you bluffed through and even managed to
get a high record in, but that work you really enjoyed, how was that
done? Is it not silence, too, that opens the door to our dearest and
deepest companionships, our profoundest sorrows, our greatest joys?
Anyway this wilderness silence is all worth while thinking about, is it
not?
Why should this great silence, this friendly wilderness power be
considered anti-social? Really, is it not most social? Does it not bring
us all nearer together, sometimes even when we are afraid to be nearer
to one another? Does it not make us all equal, making us aware of those
profound things in life which we all have in common? Silence can say,
can teach, what speech can never, to the end of the world, learn to
express. It is safe to say that as soon as most lips are silent, then
and then only do the thoughts and the soul begin to live, to grow, to
become something of what they are destined to be, for as Maeterlinck
says, silence ripens the fruits of the soul. Never think that it is
unsociable people or people who don’t know how to talk who set such a
value on silence. No, it is those who are able to talk best and most
deeply, think best and most deeply, who, following the long trail,
recognize the fact that words can never after all express those truths
which are among us--no, neither love, nor death, nor any great joy, nor
destiny can ever be expressed by word of mouth, by speech.