Silence Is Not Empty

I wrote this when I was 19:

"I like silence / but there's really none."

I'm 27 now and I still think about it.

We treat silence like absence. Like a gap that needs filling. Someone stops talking and we scramble to fill it. A room goes quiet and we reach for our phones. A conversation pauses and we panic.

But silence is not empty. Silence is full. It's full of everything that just happened and everything that's about to. It's the inhale between sentences. The space between notes that makes the music work.

The best conversations I've ever had involved long silences. Not awkward ones. The other kind. The kind where two people are sitting together and nothing needs to be said because being there is enough.

I think we're afraid of silence because silence forces you to hear yourself. And most people don't want to hear themselves. They don't want to sit with the thought they've been avoiding. The feeling they've been scrolling past. The question they don't have an answer to.

I get it. It's uncomfortable. The inside noise is louder than the outside noise. Always has been.

But here's the thing. Everything I've ever made that was worth anything came from sitting in that silence long enough for something to surface. The poem. The idea. The decision.

Silence is not the absence of something.

Silence is where everything begins.

-I.R.