Silence

"Silence is another way of saying what I want to say, and lying is another way of hoping it will go away."

The thing about silence is that it expresses no less than any words. On occasion, we all seem to think that if we ignore something, or stay quiet about it, nobody will know anything about it, or it will just go away. And yet, that's so far from how anything really works. Silence doesn't fix anything, it doesn't make problems disappear.

When no words are spoken, when everything is left to fall through the air and make sense of itself, it's that much more frustrating. It expresses everything. The sheer reluctance to speak relates volumes of meaning that words cannot in any way give. Syllables roughly combined into words put into phrases and conversations can't capture the truth that silence so clearly unfolds for those who care to look at it.

And as for lying, lies build up stories of their own. Sometimes we lie to ourselves, and sometimes we lie to the rest of the world. But perhaps more often than we realize, in trying to lie to others, we only really succeed in lying to ourselves. And because we're trying so hard to build up this nonsense for ourselves, intentionally or otherwise, on occasion we lose ourselves in all of this, in everything.

Sometimes it's easier to lie than it is to tell the truth. Sometimes we try to forget ourselves in the rest of the world and build something up to hide what we want, what we mean. Sometimes we stay quiet because it's the only way to tell the truth. Sometimes we lie because we can't or don't want to face something.

Maybe that all made sense, maybe it made none at all. In the end though, does it matter? No. That's typically the way I've lived up to this point. Perhaps it's right, perhaps it's not. In the end though, I'm fine with it the way it is...or something of that sort.