Skip to main content

Silence


There is much a doctor can never say. Keeping silent hurts, but it is a necessary exercise when a patient arrives at the clinic seeking more than just a prescription for her illness. It is the part of the vocation that neither university teaches nor the church canonises.

This silence is a miracle when one knows how to listen to it. The sacred religiosity of the profession ends here, faced with the sharp wit of a client probing for an answer. If, for every patient who complains about their spouse, I allowed the slightest hint of concession and my expression betrayed even the faintest amen during the consultation, rest assured, I would be sealing the marital grave myself. That’s right—when someone starts complaining, they already have their bags packed, merely awaiting a formal excuse, and nothing serves that purpose better than something straight from the doctor’s mouth to decree the end.

But being a companion to silence does not prevent me from muttering a few words of caution here and there, even if any attempt to guide someone in matters of the heart is such folly that, sooner or later, I expect to hear they have identified a disorder for it. There seems to be no other way. I have seen people divorce for the most absurd reasons, but I have also seen people marry for even worse ones.

In people’s minds, every desire can and should be fulfilled, ideally with someone at hand to listen and then generously spread the good news. Most of the time, however, reality is quite different, and the heartbeat of desire is not always reciprocated. I do not even understand why people are so obsessed with fulfilling everything. A light heart is not one burdened with achievements; it is simply a heart that remains faithful to what is just and beautiful, unyielding to whatever weighs it down. After all, it is sometimes better that certain desires never come true.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Fallacy of Self‑Sufficiency

Some people will tell you — quite loudly, usually — that they are enough. They need no one, thank you very much. Entirely self‑made. A closed circuit. I, too, fancied myself an island at one time. A small, sturdy principality of one. I paid my own bills. Made my own tea. I even spoke aloud to myself in the supermarket queue, which was meant to prove something. But late at night, when all the heroic independence had been done for the day, there it was — a sort of homesickness without a forwarding address. You know the feeling. You’re supposedly sovereign, but you still wish someone would knock. Self‑sufficiency is a word that weighs a bit too much. It sounds like an insurance policy or a piece of camping equipment. It promises freedom, but only the kind you can fit in a box. Like eating an entire birthday cake alone — which, I confess, I’ve done. Because the truth (and it arrives, as truths tend to, when you’ve just burned your toast) is that we are made of others. We are es...

The Progressive Misreading of Silence

At 5, I entered rooms like a murmur. I was already listening for something behind the noise — something older than voices, softer than footsteps. “He’s such a well-behaved boy,” they said, smiling with relief. But what they mistook for virtue was only quiet intuition. I was not good. I was attuned. At 11, I had mastered the art of presence without weight. I could sit by the window for hours, watching the wind pass through the trees like thought through the body. “He’s quiet,” they would say — gently, but with a trace of discomfort. They couldn’t name the feeling of someone watching without need. At 17, I was called “mature.” But maturity is not a virtue — it is a scar. I had already seen the shape of endings before others saw beginnings. Friends came to me like tide to stone, hoping to be held. I held them, yes — but not always with words. Sometimes silence is the only honest offering. At 24, my stillness no longer charmed. The world asked for brightness, momentum, performa...

Clarity Begins Where Pretence Ends

At some quiet juncture, without spectacle or warning, the architecture of one’s life begins to feel misaligned. The roles once worn with ease grow heavy; the rhythm once followed now falters. In that stillness — where noise gives way to unease — emerges a longing not for more, but for truth. Not the polished kind offered by others, but the raw clarity that demands a reckoning with who we are, beneath all that we’ve built. At that point, we no longer seek applause, distraction, or even resolution. What we seek is clarity — elemental, grounding, liberating. But this clarity is not the kind that flatters. It is not decorative. It is not curated for display. It is the kind that requires dismantling illusions, reordering assumptions, and exposing the scaffolding that holds our being together. To know oneself is not a sentimental pursuit. It is an architectural one. Each insight is a cornerstone; each falsehood identified, a wall removed. We begin, not with grand gestures, but wi...