“Do not speak unless you can improve the silence.”

I’ve often wondered what Twitter feed, the blogosphere and Facebook would look like were there to be a filter that removed any content that did not improve the silence. Take Twitter, for example. Users post roughly 1,200 Tweets per second. Facebook has 500,000,000 active users – 1 in every 13 people on earth – and roughly 50% of them log on every day. Over 700,000,000,000 (yes, billion!) minutes per month are spent on Facebook and every ten minutes 500,000 links are shared, 1,000,000 friend requests are accepted and almost 1,500,000 messages are sent. We human beings are social animals!

Joseph Conrad once quipped that “To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.” I have nothing against parrots, in fact I am thinking of getting a couple of them when the time is right, but I do wish that my fellow human beings would take more care with the words they speak, speaking only when their words would truly improve the silence.

Silence is an increasingly valuable and rare commodity in the world today and I have to wonder if we’ve forgotten how important it is to maintaining sanity, perspective and creative momentum. Many of the great minds throughout human history offered compelling perspectives on the value of silence and here a but a few of my favorites:

• “True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.” ~William Penn
• “Silence is a source of great strength.” ~ Lao Tzu
• “Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

What does silence mean to you? Do you consider its worth from time to time? It is so easy to get caught up in the noisy and frenetic desperation and to overlook and underestimate the long pauses, the short silences and quiet moments alone or with company. When you reacquaint yourself with the benefits of silence, however, you’ll find that time opens back up for you, space naturally emerges between thoughts, words and deeds and the rhythm of your life, no matter how chaotic and discordant you may have allowed it to become, is restored.

Take a few minutes this morning to enjoy the silence. What do you hear?

“You aren’t learning anything when you’re talking.” ~ Lyndon B. Johnson