Silence the Forgotten Human Skill

yeah i’m on a quest

i’m an anthropologist and i try to

understand how we can be human together

but people we love but also with the

ones we don’t like that much

so i travel the world to understand and

to find

ways and answers how we can shape the

world in a way

in a humana way in a humane way in a

peaceful way

and a constructive way and today i’d

like to talk

about the importance of the role of

silence in this

because i feel sometimes that we forgot

this human skill of silence and without

that

we cannot shape the world in a way that

everyone has its space

so i think that many times

sound rules over silence knowing rules

over not knowing

and talk rules over just

listening but if we leave silence out of

the mix of our behavior

the levels of trust and creativity just

go down

so we need silence just as much as we

need sound and it’s the combination

that makes the music it’s the

combination that makes us feel

alive so during my travels i learned a

lot about the different ways we can

treat silence

and today i will share some of the most

important lessons i learned

in india togo and the uk

but first of all let me tell you

about the start of my personal journey

to appreciate silence about

15 years ago i felt ill like seriously

ill my body wasn’t functioning i slowed

down my

thyroid wasn’t working so silence was

forced upon me and i hated it

i couldn’t process information i

couldn’t put words into one sentence i

couldn’t even drive my car because it

was just way too fast

and i was fighting the space and one day

i met one of my doctors and he said

why don’t you just surrender to the pace

of silence because he said

you’re at the place where your soul is

being built

now you just go build it you’re at the

place where your soul’s being built

that sentence that brought tears to my

eyes and it sometimes still does and i

must say that in the past weeks

of our corona lock down i

you know remembered this moment

and realized once again that it is in

the silence

that we can hear the voices of our souls

because silence is not the absence of

something

silence is the presence of everything

courage love trust wisdom

it all grows in the silence not

in the words and not in the talking

silence is actually the loudest form of

communication

and it has a locked language desperately

waiting to be heard i think that silence

makes us human

it’s where we develop our connections

it’s where creativity is hiding out

and i strongly believe that if we lose

the ability

to embrace silence we lose out on our

humanity

and those are big words and i do think

it’s important to find your voice

and to speak up you know in my life i

learned that it’s important to be bold

and brave

you know to to jump in a conversation to

be assertive

to speak up there’s so many problems we

have to tackle we got to speak up be

loud be fast do it now

because we have to fix it time is money

don’t waste time

but the thing is that somehow we created

this world

in which sounds rules over silence we

have so many screaming conversations

in which no one is actually listening to

what’s going on

the cleverest one-liner might go viral

politicians fire one-liners to each

other

and it drives us nuts at least it drives

me nuts

and i think that we live in a rhythm in

which everyone

is just talking and no one is listening

our office spaces are even too loud to

finish the thought process

and if we don’t stop ourselves the

loudness of our opinions

they block us from seeing the actual

world surrounding us

so when is the last time you’ve seen a

politician

sit together with other politicians and

be touched by the words

the other person is telling him or her

and the willingness to change their

minds

because they find new ideas in the

silence between the words

new ideas are born in the silence not in

the words

without silence we cannot build bridges

between our differences

we cannot find new ideas i think even

without silence we might lose our

democracies

so therefore it’s it’s of major

importance to master

the human skill of silence and during my

travels

i got some lessons on how to do that

so let’s first go to india i was there

last january

and i visited chathasgar and there lives

a community which called them helps the

ramnami

and they were seen as untouchable

in the time the caste system was still

alive

and untouchable means that people don’t

even want to be touched by your

shadow they were excluded from all parts

of social life

and they decided to come together not so

much to fight

their social position but to build on

their inner strength

and in doing so they created a community

and different

ways of living and one of his that they

couldn’t enter temples

so they decided to tattoo the name of

lord ram on their bodies

and therefore their full bodies became

the temples

they do a lot of chanting they come

together and

just to give you a feel of what that

feels and looks like

i’ll show you a short clip of the

documentary

patterns of life which will be

broadcasted later last year

in which i had the privilege to take a

part of

[Music]

[Music]

there’s two lessons i’d like to share

which i learned

from my experience with the ramnami

first of all is that

chanting and singing together

allowed me to feel the silence within

myself

and to feel the deeper connections with

the people around me and the world

around me

and to me i realized deeper that music

puts me in touch with the feelings the

emotions i cannot express otherwise and

i think it counts for more of us

music holds like the key to the unlocked

language

of silence so to experience deeper

connections together with others

we need to sink in our rhythms we need

to tune into each other and when we do

we feel that we build those connections

and i think that it’s part of the social

unrest today that we live in a world

where it’s not

really synced into each other we’re not

tuned into each other

and therefore we become disconnected if

we don’t take the time to do so

and the second lessons i learned lesson

i learned is that

it’s actually the silence that makes the

music

it’s like in every music piece that when

you hear a note

that after that you might start

wondering what the next

sound will be music

creates itself in between the notes

that’s where the actual creation process

happens

and i realize it’s the same in dialogues

and interactions

go chanting like for a long time

and during the chant they connect

and they listen and in the end they sit

down drink tea have a small bite

in silence and i realized being with

them that is in those silence you can

actually

shape new relationships together with

other people

and being interested in the rhythm

the rhythm of life the rhythm that

people shaped together to create this

world and to

live together i found myself at a voodoo

festival

because voodoo is a rhythmic religion

fudosi they believe that the world is

full of spirits and each spirit has its

own rhythm

and if you play that rhythm if you tune

into the rhythm if you dance the rhythm

you invite the energy of the spirit to

come in

now i was at this festival and i started

talking with my son and my son is a

buddha priest

and he told me about his religion and he

was just upset that people had

this image because most of you will by

the word

voodoo think about dolls and spells and

other black magic

but that’s not the voodoo i experienced

in togo

because my son said please come and i’ll

well teach you tell you ex you

experience

the voodoo of my people

and that’s what i did so i entered there

and in my anthropological research to

the essence of voodoo

i experienced a couple of ceremonies

and one of them took about 10 hours

just to give you a feeling

[Music]

that was intense and there is so much

i could share related to the experience

i had during the photo ceremonies but

for now i just like to

shed light on one of the lessons i took

and that is the role and the importance

of rituals

to allow yourself to enter a silent

space

because each time we went to a new stage

of the ceremony

there was this very small ritual with a

very clear sequence of actions

like offering or cowbells

or smalls chanting and it is those

rituals which

help us to move from the ordinary

into the extraordinary space and once

you’re

in that space your mind can go

anywhere you’re kind of invited to go

to an inner journey in silence

and and this is where you see me sitting

during the ceremony

where i was confronted with many

hard life questions and they were

prompted

by the offering that was about to happen

and it was not quiet i mean there was

tons of noise

but somehow the tapestry of the noise

the ritual surrounded me created the

space

in which i could let my mind go to

places

i’d never been before to find the voices

there

to listen to my soul because in

shamanism they say

that during life and the traumas you

have in life you lose bits and pieces of

your soul

and the healing is about retrieving

those bits and pieces and that’s

exactly what i experienced in togo

so the lesson learned is that we need

rituals

to allow ourselves to go into this

special place which is

out of the ordinary

and you know what i learned

is that i realized that i don’t often

create those spaces

question to you when is the last time

you sat in silence and you could hear

your heartbeat

or when is the last time you sat in

silence

with your loved ones and you could hear

their heartbeat or with your colleagues

your leadership team i mean these

moments are rare but we need them

because in the silence

we have the opportunity to hear the

things

we mostly ignore now to be in this

silence

is not like switching off and waited out

until it’s over

and that’s something which i learned

from the quakers

the quakers are experts in silent

meetings

they are originally a christian group

and their community started in the late

in the mid 17th century in england

so to understand their ways of living

together and the ways they have silent

meetings i traveled to the lake

districts in the uk

and the quakers have different types of

silent meetings and they’re very well

structured

you know they sit together in a circle

and it starts when someone starts the

meeting

and the idea is originated when the the

founder

the community started is that we don’t

need someone else to explain the word of

god to us

everyone is equal so we can all talk to

god and we can listen to that but we

need to listen

and they call it we need to listen to

the light

so their whole silent meetings are

structured to in a way

that we can listen to the light

well when you’re in the meeting you

don’t have to be silent you can talk

there’s no issue

but the only thing they say is only make

sound if it enriches the silence

so if you sit in the meeting and you

feel the urge to say something

just question yourself is it my ego

talking is it

something bigger than me which wants to

express itself

could it be mistaken by a political

statement or a personal lecture

and if the answer is that you feel it’s

something bigger than you

you say what you have to say

the result is is that in many quaker

meetings it’s pretty silent

and they call this process a discernment

process

and what they taught me and the lesson i

took

is that i more often ask myself

do i need to speak out now or not

is it my ego talking or not

because sometimes

our words can improve the silence

but many times they just

give words to something we don’t need

words for

some things should be left unsaid

because the words would kill the meaning

well if you are someone

who kind of forgot the human skill of

silence

then remember in essence it’s a very

easy thing to do and it has

something magical to sit in silence

with someone else to create the ritual

space

you need to let your minds wonder

together deepen the connections

build the trust between the words

so basically it’s just that i like to

urge you

to just have the courage once in a while

to just shut up

and be with what’s there

and to make only those sounds

that enrich our silence because remember

we can make sound but we cannot

make silence

silence is the given sound just

disrupts the silence and

our souls are being built

in the silence so i invite you

especially during those days

we live in now where the world is full

of loudness

let’s go sit down and build

our souls