April 24, 2007

• For Love of the (Quiet) Game

  First I need to tell you some background information.  My condition for saying something is that if I think it, I say it.  In school, by myself, with my family, I am usually rambling about something or other, and sometimes it makes sense.  My condition for singing is that if I am in a proximity or social setting where I feel people aren’t listening directly to me, then I’ll sing.   This means I sing in my car, in the hallways at school, and around my house.  On a normal day I’ll sing about ten full switchfoot songs, fragments of other switchfoot songs, and other miscellaneous songs that aren’t as important as switchfoot.

  So, one day I thought of an idea that I decided to propose as a bet to a good friend of mine, Alex (a friend who knows all too well my proclivity to sing and talk, I drive him to school). 

  Alex found my terms agreeable, and he bet that I couldn’t keep silent for twenty-four hours, from 12 A.M. to 12 A.M.   Terms included: no intelligible communication, sleeptalking doesn’t count, and I was allowed to laugh. 

  It started this morning at 12 A.M, and all I can say is, it’s hell.  Once midnight passed, I felt an invisible gag cover my mouth, and my brain become very terrified at the fact that it wasn’t allowed to release its thoughts glibly for so long a stretch of time.  Trying to not do something definitely makes you want to do that thing.  Perhaps I would have been silent for much of the time I was silent for today anyways, but I wouldn’t have minded should I not have taken an oath of silence.  But now, the moment-by-moment frustration I experience is that although I possess all the equipment and the desire to speak, I cannot!  Ahh!  My mind’s thoughts are like a small child kicking to get out of a sack they’ve been put in. 

  Technically, I didn’t make it.  Fourth period for me is AP English, and we were spending the period writing an essay quietly (how convenient!).  However, in the middle of the period a girl in the back of the classroom asked, “How much time is left?”  As a runner I carry my watch around everywhere and love timing things, even stuff like the time it takes to different classes.  So I glanced at my watch and blurted out, “Twenty-three minutes.”  My teacher, who knew I was trying to be silent for the day, is shocked and says, “Philip!”  And then the painful realization hit me and I began violently twisting around in my desk, and I may have uttered a “dangit” afterward.  It’s ironic that the class that should have been the easiest ended up being the class I failed in.  But then again, I was focusing on my writing, so I wasn’t really thinking about staying silent, which is the main reason why I didn’t check myself before speaking.  It took only a brief utterance, and the perfection of my task was ruined.

  However, I have kept silent since then to see how silent I can keep for twenty-four hours.  The difficulty and consuming frustration that accompanies willfully denyone oneself the faculty of speech cannot be emphasized enough.  So many times in classroom conversations I wanted to say something.  There were sometimes where I would notice something that would have helped people to understand something, and I could only watch.  When only other people can talk, you can watch what they are thinking without your own moderating interjections, and it becomes extremely annoying when they are drawing wrong inferences and you cannot fix the misunderstanding.  Tomorrow I’m going to spend all day calrifying things for people who didn’t know everything.

  Out of the abundance of his thoughts a man speaks.  What humans look to be doing from an overhead perspective is waking up each day, talking, then going back to sleep.  Disabling the speaking function on a human is really a fundamental deprivation.  It’s like a bird resisting flight for a day.  It’s just so natural. 

  One potential problem with remaining completely silent is that people might think you are being a jerk.  “Hey Phil … Phil? … PHIL!!” Thus, I printed out little cards that said, “Sorry I’m not talking for 24 hrs. for a bet.  But I still love you.  Please tell the other people around you … I don’t have many cards.”  It was funny to hand a person one of these cards and for them to immediately begin asking me questions.   

  Not being in social situations doesn’t help the frustration either.   I think I realized today how much I talk to myself by wanting so many times to mumble things to myself when I got home from school.  Simple thoughts want to be said quite badly sometimes, just like, “Ah, it’s time to go,” or “Well, that doesn’t make sense,” or “Now where did I put that thing?” 

  If you ever think your life is going too fast, take a day of silence.  Today has felt like several days.  I still have two hours until I can speak and sing at will.  It is going to be so freeing, so wonderful, so amazing to have my ability to speak back.  Also, I now realize how much what I say matters and that all my life I have been able to say anything I want, and that it really is in my power to say this or that.  Words were never a trivial thing. 

  Sorry this was so long, but I’m sure you can understand my want to communicate right now.  Gu’bye! 

  P.S. I just realized what this means.  This whole experience has given me a slightly deeper understanding of Jesus healing the mute.  I can’t believe how shocked they must have been. 

  • 9:46 pm
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