Hello there friends! In this 5th article, now under the title Stayin' Alive, I shall tackle a virtue representing the letter S in Stayin' Alive. As I mentioned in article 4, I am quite fond of presenting ideas through acronyms, so please bear with me on that. Any guess as to what the letter S might stand for considering our theme of stayin' alive? Many ideas sprouted as I scanned the possible entries in the letter S, like simplicity (my original focus in this blog, remember?), serenity, silence, spirituality, sincerity, stability, study, sacrifice, self-mastery, service and strength. I thought to myself - since this blog is all about stayin' alive, I have decided to designate SILENCE for S as it appears to be the most appropriate starting point for the aim of stayin' alive, spiritually and physically.
I refer to both silence of the tongue and silence of the heart. If one is modest in speech (perhaps even mute) but has a turbulent heart due to negative baggage, it is time to practice silence of the heart, serenity, if you will. Conversely, if one's inner self is so relaxed due to his peaceful countenance but handicapped by acidic loquacity, at times, perhaps, to the point of recklessness, then it is time for him to employ silence of the tongue. I know one prominent Filipino who, in the early 80s, suffered the tragic consequence of not taming his tongue. But I also know some people who possess the gift of staying kind, in words and in spirit, even during unfortunate or provocative moments. How desirable it will be to have both types of silence, right?
Jesus Christ is a perfect example of silence. In the Way of the Cross written by St. Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, the 9th Station (Jesus falls for the third time) gives an excerpt from Isaiah 53:7 which vividly describes the kind of silence that Jesus exemplified: "He offered himself up because it was his will; abused and ill-treated, he opened not his mouth as a sheep led to his slaughter, dumb as a lamb before its shearers". Such is Christ's supernatural way of achieving his aim of stayin' alive - through his passion, death and resurrection, benefitting the whole of humanity. Though we are not compelled to do a physical repeat of Jesus Christ's crucifixion, we are exhorted by Christ in Luke 9:23 "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."
I think you'll agree with me that it is man's natural aspiration to follow examples of peace, of silence. But it is reality - what takes place around him and his own personal traits - that makes it difficult for him to keep his peace and simply bite his tongue especially when the human way he knows best to handle an oppressive occasion is do some yelling inspite of his knowledge that this kind of reaction can aggravate a situation that has turned incendiary to begin with. It takes two deliberate verbal offenders to create that kind of scenario. It is a miscommunication that can escalate into a long-running, deep seated animosity between erstwhile friends - and what a waste. Only the practice of silence by one or both communicators can avert this.
Real life examples abound of how a reckless use of the tongue can lead to social disorders. We're all witnesses to incidents of broken marriages, family disunity, disharmony in the workplace and local and global unrest, many of which can be traced to the inability of either of the feuding parties to resort to the very effective communication tool - SILENCE. Don't get me wrong. I am not advocating silence to the point of abdicating one's inherent right to express himself and defend his basic personal rights. Rather, I am offering an alternative in handling potentially destabilizing verbal exchanges in manageable cases.
If death is the great equalizer, then perhaps silence is the great stabilizer, isn't it? If you are a family man, try the silence effect at home - with your wife, with your children and with your in-laws. I am sure it will work like magic. Try it too with your business colleagues and with your favorite competitor. Have you ever tried agreeing silently with someone who is prepared to make a verbal discourse, maybe assault, to drive home a point and thwart your opinion or belief (in an amoral issue, that is). I don't know if this analogy suits: it's like driving a big wedge against the wheel of a truck that has broken loose while sloping down. There will be a jolt, yes... but the thing will definitely stop! The problem with us ordinary mortals is that we stubbornly cling to our distorted paradigm of "I am right, he is wrong", and when we're in the middle of desperately proving the other person wrong, we deliberately lose our peace and engage in verbal abuse and let the virtue of silence slip us by. And in our postmortem, we quixotically assess what happened: "What went wrong?" Hahaha. You knew exactly where it was headed for but you were overcome by your ill temper. The Pilipino word for that is more apt - "pikon".
On a lighter note, there is this need for silence in man's usual daily routine where he can commit honest, sometimes amusing, mistakes in communication (1) timing - he can talk out of turn which is a demerit in interpersonal relations; or he can simply blurt out things to draw attention to himself (KSP or "kulang sa pansin" or wanting in attention), (2) dosage - he can overtalk maybe because it's his habit or he's uncontrollably excited to share something; loquacity is not that easy to check since the average person is prone to show off what he knows and may not be aware of the rules of proper communication, (3) accuracy - there's a saying "more talk, more mistakes, less talk, less mistakes, no talk, no mistakes, the loud message of which is that it is better to open your mouth when you're on the safe side of correctness; but there are people who would rather experience humiliation to develop their confidence or chutzpah, if you will, than suffer in silence. If the breach of silence in the 3 items I mentioned above leads to laughter or raised eyebrows, I think the other party, or the man at the receiving end, will hopefully be more tolerant and respond with a smile... and silence.
Let us all be agents of peace. When called for, let us be silent. And help ourselves and others enjoy stayin' alive! See you next article for the letter T.
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