A hand extended
Albrecht Durer
“Silence can be like a hand extended.” – John Berger
I remember this one time, years ago, I was sitting in a food court when a woman nearby suddenly burst into tears. Great, heaving, noisy sobs that spoke of utter heartbreak.
She was sitting beside another woman – a friend, I presumed – so I didn’t go over to offer help. They had been talking quietly in Japanese just before the crying started, so I had no idea as to what had upset this woman so much, but the force of her crying was so strong that she had absolutely no ability to restrain or inhibit it. She sobbed loud and hard and long. Sappho wrote that “What cannot be said will be wept”; this woman had a lot that could not be said.
The other woman? She sat there, quiet and still. Her stillness had a quality of steadfastness about it. And acceptance. She showed no sign of embarrassment and did not project any emotion she might have felt onto the event. She just sat with – truly with – this other person in her moment of distress. After the sobs died away, the quiet friend turned and spoke one quiet sentence to her sad friend, they met each other’s eyes and gave a brief slight nod in unison, and then just turned and, side by side, stared silently out of the window in front of them.
I spied on this furtively because silence fascinates me.
So often, in moments of extreme feeling and reaction, people tend to rush in and try to say or do the right thing. This can be motivated by compassion, by wanting to relieve distress. It can also be motivated by embarrassment, a wish to tidy away any unseemly or unscripted moments so that life can be neat and predictable once more.
But, as John Berger said, silence can be like a hand extended. It can elicit responses by allowing others to extend their selves into a social space – to extend emotion or insight into a silence that is non-judgemental and even welcoming.
Shutting down honest displays of feeling or utterances of thought can act like a slap; clumsy or controlling attempts to steer or prohibit conversations will squelch authentic communication and shut off outlets of emotion, imagination, and intellect.
As a mentor, I have found that the best thing I can do for my mentees is to listen; my intent listening is the hand I extend to them. When I have accessed coaching or mentoring for myself, I have been shocked by how quickly I am interrupted by the coach in their rush to tell me what to think and do. Quite often their advice is useless – off the shelf formulae misapplied to someone they didn’t take the time to understand.
As a facilitator, I cudgel my brains to structure my sessions to create space for participants to speak into and to feel safe while doing so. I remind myself that, when designing conversations, allowing for quiet moments is as important as anything I could ever say.
What that Japanese friend understood so well in that food court all those years ago was that the best – the gentlest and most regarding – response she could give to her crying friend was something that our speech-obsessed and action-orientated world sees as nothing much. But in giving her silence, in allowing her friend the space into which she could pour her urgent distress, she extended kindness and sincerity. And that, for a few moments, was everything.
