Be Berry, Berry Quiet

I like quiet. I like to be quiet and I like it when others are quiet. I like being in quiet places. To me, quiet is good.

Over the years I have discovered that most people are not very comfortable with quiet. Most of us live with the background noise or music going all of the time. We walk into the house and turn on the television or the radio and don't really watch it our listen to it. I am a little embarrassed to admit that during counseling sessions I enjoy watching people squirm in the times of silence. I have some friends and relatives (by marriage, of course) who seem to think that blank spaces in conversation are bad things that must not be allowed to exist. Any silence that shows up in a conversation is quickly accosted and pummeled to death with a massive volley of words. These words don't have to make sense and often don't. Their only purpose is to cover the silence.

Learning to be quiet seems difficult for many people. I learned to be quiet by being in groups of people who were having some really stupid conversations and realizing my comments were just as stupid as theirs. I learned to be quiet by going squirrel hunting with my friend, Barry Roederer, and sitting in the woods for long periods of time waiting for the squirrels to show up. I learned to be quiet by making an idiot of myself in school a few times. I learned to be quiet by saying what I was thinking in front of my mother and my father. I learned to be very quiet by sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night with my brother and some friends. I learned to by quiet in Army boot camp where the slightest sound or movement could get you volunteered to do something you really didn't want to do. I learned to be quiet when I discovered that most people misinterpret being quiet for being wise. My father was a great "be quiet" trainer. If I was close enough, every time I made a smart comment he would smack me upside the head. It didn't take long for me to learn to pick my words carefully or pick my spots strategically. When I entered the ministry my dad gave me two pieces of advice. He said, "Make them fire you," which has happened and, "Listen." He want on to explain, "The world is full of talkers and needs more listeners. So you be a listener." I never forgot his advice.

I am not anti noise. Sounds – even noise works for me. Most noise doesn't bother me. I come from a large family so I grew up around noise. Most of my early jobs were in noisy places. I do some of my best thinking in noisy places. I can work and write in a coffee shop, in a restaurant or during a meeting. It is not that I ignore people; I can listen to a couple of different conversations at once and read or write. Noise is okay. Some people need darkness and complete quiet to sleep. Not me. I can sleep in a brightly lit room with the radio going. Talking doesn't keep me awake. While in college I became especially adept at sleeping in noisy, brightly lit rooms. They called them classes. In fact, some conversations put me to sleep. But I just prefer quite.

Like most people, I get in less trouble over what I don't say than over what I do say. But I have also noticed that I get into trouble more consistently over being quiet. People complain that I don't talk to them enough; that I don't do enough communicating. My wife complains that I am too quiet. I tend to not answer e-mails. I figure that if they didn't ask me a direct question or ask me for a response, they didn't want to hear back from me. I tend not to return phone calls. I haven't figured out a rational for that so I guess I have to write that one off to just being rude. I hate to talk on the phone so I tend to not answer my phone when I am busy (If I am busy my phone should be busy.) or return calls to people I didn't want to talk to in the first place. If I had wanted to talk to them, I would have called them.

For a person with a rather "public" oriented job, I don't like to talk much. But, stand me up in front of a crowd and off I go. And do a pretty good job of it. I can be funny, witty, interesting and informative. But I would much rather sit in the back and just be quiet. I have found that I do pretty well to follow the advice of that great social commentator, Elmer Fudd. He said, "Be berry, berry quiet." And I am trying.

Copyright © 2009, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved