Since retirement, I have enjoyed learning from movies while on the treadmill at the Dover YMCA. Whether the subject is God, relationships, marriage, parenting, living, dying, painting, photography or technology; movies have been a great source of learning. After all, retirement is not just about decay, it is also about growth, and it has been uncanny how movies speak to specific issues that I'm experiencing in my life.
A line in a movie caught my attention today. It probably resonated since I've recently developed a habit of avoiding silence while in conversation with others. Actually, I've gotten really good (bad) at filling the dead air with words.
Here's the line from the movie:
"Why are we embarrassed by silence? What comfort do we find in all the noise?
If we are quiet, here's what silence sounds like: "I hear my heart beating. I hear the other person's heart beating. I hear the human noise we make when not one of us is moving. Maybe in silence we better understand the humanity of the person in front of us."
If this is true, I guess this movie is trying to teach me to zip it.
After learning another lesson I felt pretty good while leaving the YMCA today. In this case, I guess we will see if future conversations contain any gold.
No comments:
Post a Comment