That Awkard Moment… – Cosmicmessages

We, as a society, have a strange relationship with silence between two individuals. We try and avoid it using, “um’s” and “ah’s”. We try and interrupt it, using coughs and clearing our throats and we try to eliminate it altogether by playing music or having a TV on all the time.

How did we get to this? Why are we so afraid of silence? Why do yoga studios decidedly leave out the meditation portion of the class? The focus is always on the yang, the movement, the sound, the conversation and never on the yin. Yin is listening, contemplative, subtle.

In journalism school we were taught to use silence as a means to get our interviewee to talk more about a subject. We were taught that people naturally are uncomfortable with long pauses and often fill it with unnecessary chatter.

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