I recently visited a good friend of mine. One who has known me for a long, long time. And a guy, whose opinion I value greatly. One day, while riding around town I realized, we spent about 20 minutes of our car ride in silence. Not a weird, strange silence. But a comfortable kind of silence. It made me giggle. I said to him “Do you know we haven’t spoken in about 20 minutes?” He replied “To be honest, I didn’t notice until you said something.”
At first, I thought it was odd. I mean, it wasn’t like either one of us ever are at a loss for words. But what seemed very natural was that, it didn’t feel weird. “Is that weird to you, that we have been driving around in silence?” I asked. “No. I think it’s cool.” he said. And so do I. Have you ever been out with a date or your significant other and the conversation just stopped? And as a woman, it’s as if we are strangely programmed to fill that space with, well let’s face it-noise.
I have been on dates and experienced that and sometimes what I like to do is sit in silence and see what the guy does. In some cases, they don’t notice like my friend. Or they fill that void with chatter. But it wasn’t until recently that I learned to appreciate the silence. Think about it. You have to be really comfortable around someone to just sit there and enjoy the beauty that is not talking so dang much.
Now this isn’t just for the ladies. I mean, yes, we talk… A LOT. But guys enjoy the sound of their voice just as much as we do. What I am saying is, consider what you do during that time. In my example, we both enjoyed the car ride. We saw the scenery, hummed along to the radio and it wasn’t as if we checked out on each other. It was just another way to enjoy that persons company without filing the need to talk.
Sure, this doesn’t happen often and sometimes when it does, it really is uncomfortable. As humans, it seems odd to be engaged in conversation and to allow silence between people to occur. But when you can be around a person and truly enjoy spending time with them without saying a word, that’s when you can learn to really value your time, their time and appreciate that your relationship is mature enough to sit in silence.
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