The Value of Silence In A Noisy World: Olga Lehman (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Olga Lehman’s talk titled “The Value of Silence In A Noisy World” at TEDxTrondheim conference.

Olga Lehman’s enlightening TEDx talk, “The Value of Silence in a Noisy World,” delves into the multifaceted nature of silence and its profound impact on our lives. She begins by challenging the conventional perception of silence as merely an absence of sound, illustrating through personal anecdotes and scientific insights that silence is a rich, complex experience interwoven with sound.

Lehman categorizes silence into three distinct types: silencing (acts of power abuse), silences (guided by societal norms), and the enriching silence that fosters interconnectedness and insight. Through her narrative, she shares her journey of exploring silence, from her struggles to embrace natural silence in Norway to the lessons learned from cultures around the world. Lehman argues that mastering the craft of silence requires practice, mindfulness, and an understanding of its different forms.

She encourages the audience to actively seek and create moments of silence in their daily lives, suggesting that such practices can lead to greater self-awareness, empathy, and a balanced life. Her talk is a compelling call to reevaluate and embrace the role of silence in nurturing a more thoughtful, connected, and peaceful existence.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

It’s so nice to be here, so let’s get the silence started. [SILENCE] I was clearly testing you and I think you did great. And even if you thought that this was awkward, I bet that many of you during this silence, you were able to notice some noises like some glasses around or some whispers of laughter. And I also bet that many of you in this silence became aware of an impulse to do something, a thought, an emotion, perhaps even a judgment about me and what was going on.

And I hope that at least one or two of you took the time to appreciate the beautiful skirt that I’m wearing tonight.

So you see, we tend to define silence as an absence or a void. But silence is neither a pure absence nor a pure void. Silence is always coexisting with a little bit of noise or sound of movements or forms of language.

For example, some years ago, I actually went inside of an anechoic chamber. It looks a little bit like this in the picture. And you can find those rooms in laboratories of acoustics or physics at universities. And I was there for four eternal minutes. And I was actually quite disturbed because there was this very strong noise. I felt as if a car was on its way to me. At some point, I thought I was hallucinating, but I wasn’t. That sound was created by the gentle movement of my eyelashes touching the face mask that I had to wear to be inside.

The Pursuit of Silence

So this means that my silence in that room, our silence in this room, and silence pretty much everywhere else is redirecting our attention somewhere. And I have devoted over a decade to pursue silence, to study silence. And what I want to do in this talk is to demystify what silence is for you all. Because the more you know about what silence is and what silence is not, the more intentionally you will be able to use silence to nurture your relationships with others, with yourself, with your surroundings.

As a psychologist, I have studied silence in many different forms. I go places and make observations about what happens when we are in silence. I also let people talk to me about it, conversations, therapy sessions, interviews. I write about my own experiences with silence. And I also study what other people have written about it.

I tend to say that studying silence has made me a story listener. And I want to try and experiment with you all. Are you ready? Yeah? Okay. So I would like you all to quietly, of course, I want you to remember what has been the deepest form of silence that you have experienced lately. Picture that moment in your hearts, in your minds.

Stories of Silence

Where were you? How did it feel to be there? If we all slow down enough, we all have plenty full of stories to tell about silence. It could be a mountain hike, a meditation retreat, being by yourself on your sofa, slowing down as you drink your morning coffee. And of course, some of those stories will be more poetic than others.

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I had once a parent telling me that the most realistic place for them to find silence is to hide themselves in the bathroom. That it is all about those three or four extra minutes where they can take a breath before returning to a hectic life with the toddlers. And I also had a patient telling me once that the bathroom is her to-go place when she’s feeling anxious or overwhelmed by interactions with her colleagues.

Some of you might think that there’s not a lot of poetry in bathrooms, fair enough. And that’s not really my point. My point is that we all can embrace silence wherever we are if we pay enough attention, if we have a good intention for it, okay? So some years ago, I used to live here in Trondheim as I took my PhD in psychology here.

And back in the days, I also used to teach a course at NTU. It was a course about silence and quality of life and teamwork. And I wanted my students to embrace silence from the inside out. So I basically created a silent time.

Embracing Silence

That means that every single morning at class, my students and I would spend half an hour in silence. Of course, you all know now that silence is not like a pure experience. So we were engaging with different tasks. It could be a poem about silence, a video about silence, a painting about silence, a meditation practice.

And my students were journaling. They were keeping diaries about their experiences. So once the courses were over, some of those students would voluntarily donate those diaries for me to use them as research materials. And one morning, during our silent time, we watched a video performance of 4’33”, a musical piece by John Cage, an American musician. And that’s a special song because the pianist, he would stare at the piano for four minutes, 33 seconds without playing. That might be surprising for many of us because we go to concerts and we would like the pianist to play the piano, right?

So I wanted to have a look together to what one of my students wrote in her journal that morning. She started by saying, ‘Silence helps us to get closer to ourselves and to know ourselves in a better way.’ So at least intellectually, she knew that silence is valuable, it’s meaningful. And then she got a bit more honest with herself and she followed. ‘I felt disappointed that I didn’t hear anything and I had to think about my own stuff.’ You’ve been there, huh?

Reflections on Silence

So my student, she was not only disappointed because of what she couldn’t listen, the music. She was also disappointed because in silence, she felt forced to attend to the contents of her own mind, to her own bodily discomfort. And then she ended the journal entry with a masterpiece of a sentence. She wrote, ‘Expectations are different from reality.’

And I think that’s a very wise statement because what my student is teaching all of us is that silence can create a sort of contrast in the flow of our everyday life and that contrast would kind of amplify the perception of uncertainty. And then silence becomes a room for us to be with feelings, with emotions, and that’s not always very comfortable.

So here is the trick. When we are in silence, paying attention to our feelings and our emotions is very important. But it’s also just half of the homework. If you want to thrive with uncertainty, if you want to make the best out of your experiences with silence, what you need to do as well is to use silence as a possibility for you to anchor yourself in specific human values. And poets and mystics, theologians, psychologists, sociologists, philosophers have been writing about this for centuries. But we somehow have forgotten or maybe the craft of silence is easier in theory than in practice.

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Silence in Grief

So I’m going to give you an extreme example about it. As a psychotherapist, one of my fields of expertise is grief. I work with families whose children have died unexpectedly. So I bet many of us have at least once been to a funeral, and funerals are full of awkward silences and awkward words too.

So I tend to suggest when people ask me that one of the kind of things we can say in such situations is something on the lines of, ‘It’s hard to find words to show you how much I care.’ Because then we are bringing together our awareness of silence, the lack of words, uncertainty, feelings, emotions, and putting all this together with human values like honesty or compassion. And I am aware that this was an extreme example, just to make the point.

And maybe some of you might be wondering, okay, Olga is telling us so many different things about silence. She’s telling us that it’s not like a pure experience. It has to do with attention, with intention, with values, with emotions, with uncertainty. So what is silence? In the next couple of minutes, I will describe to you at least three different types of silence that we find in the literature.

Conclusion and Secrets of Silence

And to end the talk, I will also share with you a couple of secrets of what you can do about it. Okay? Let us start with the first type. The first type is known in the literature as silencing, acts of silencing. And those have to do with the use and the abuse of power.

You know, ideally speaking, power would promote belonging, respect for diversity. But our relationships go astray when there’s someone who takes a lot of space and becomes very dominant. If we escalate this, this can lead to experiences of oppression, abuse, bullying, exclusion. And in our society, we really have a long way to go.

So there’s the saying that goes, ‘Silence is golden.’ It can be golden. But not everything that shines is gold. And that’s why we have in some specific situations some rules or expectations that help us to guide us to when to be quiet. And that’s the second type called silences. Sometimes we have explicit signs that help us, that we should keep quiet in hospitals or waiting rooms or museums or temples. And I wish we had those kind of signs available in dates or working meetings, family dinners, or even funerals. Because our everyday life is kind of messy and it’s very hard for us to distinguish when are we supposed to be quiet or not.

The Idealization of Silence

And I bet most of us here have regretted both things that we said and have kept unsaid. Also, among other things, because there’s one type of silence, the third one, that we idealize, that’s the one we want the most. That the big capital S sort of silence often describes these experiences of interconnectedness, beauty, insight, wisdom, relaxation, calm. We often find those experiences in nature, in intimate moments with a beloved one, contemplating pieces of art, or through meditation or prayer.

And certainly we deserve more of those kind of silence in our everyday lives. The challenge is that the craft of silence is a practice. So I’m going to tell you a personal story. In case you haven’t noticed yet, I’m a Latina. You have noticed? Okay.

And I have been in Norway for 10 years. And every single time I talk to Norwegians that I study silence for a living, most Norwegians tell me that here silence is found in nature. And I have struggled with this because I’m a city girl and Colombia is a bit different than Norway, I also must acknowledge.

But I have tried, I’ve done my best to pursue silence in nature. And some days I feel very proud because it looks like this. But many other times I’m about to make a confession and be vulnerable. My experiences, most of my experiences with silence in nature have looked like this. Because I basically lack the skills, the tools, the practice to relax into the wilderness. And most of the Norwegians who praise that silence is found in nature, well, since they were very small, they have been practicing those skills, those tools, so that they can relax in the wilderness and embrace all what silence is to give to them.

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The Moral of the Story

So what’s the moral of the story? That it is up to us to discern which forms of silence are taking place in our everyday life and what are the specific sets of skills and tools that we need to practice. And that is sort of challenging in times like ours that are full of distractions and overstimulation and internal noise and external noise. And also times like ours where the rates of isolation and loneliness are alarming.

So that is to say that both the lack and the excess of silence can be detrimental to our health. So what can we do about it? Well, I basically want you all to do exactly what I do in my research. I want you to go places and observe what happens when you or others are in silence.

I want you to talk about it, to dare to ask questions about how others felt when in silence. I want you to write about your own experiences and to read about what other people have written about silence. Not so long ago, I actually ran into a book from Pablo d’Ors called ‘The Biography of Silence.’ And in this book, he describes silence as the ethics of attention and the ethics of care. And that’s an exquisite and profound statement.

So I want to unpack it a little bit before we end, okay? As we already know, silence can be golden and it is true that we all want and deserve more love and interconnectedness and beauty and wisdom and insight and relaxation. That’s not the problem.

Embracing the Craft of Silence

I can tell you as a psychologist that we human beings are complicated creatures. Yeah, we are. We are very used to want the gold out, but we are not very good at paying the price. And this means that if we want to get there when in silence, we need to honor the process, which is most often than not.

Yeah, the craft of silence is seldom a smooth path. It is often paid of discomfort, fear, regrets, power imbalances, distractions, uncertainty. So here is my secret. If you want to master the craft of silence, I want you to think about it as a way to aspire for balance.

Aspiring for balance could be for you to be more mindful about how little or how much you engage in certain conversations. For you, it could be to spend three or four extra minutes hiding in the bathroom, or it could be to find a meditation practice that works for you, slowing down as you drink your morning tea or spending more or less minutes sitting on your sofa. Just notice that what I said was aspiring for balance. I didn’t say achieving balance as a state.

And that is because the craft of silence is gentle. The craft of silence is humble, is patient, is flexible. So I’m actually curious. How and where are you going to craft silence in your everyday life and your own way?

Thank you very much.