BEING THERE WITHOUT SAYING ANYTHING
There are moments when being there for someone is not about finding the right words, but about saying nothing at all. There are situations when all that is needed is simply to be there, without looking for explanations, without trying to respond with ready-made phrases, without filling every space with something that sounds like an answer.
Sometimes we believe that helping means knowing what to say, that the more we say, the more present we are, the more support we provide. But there is a kind of pain, doubt, uncertainty or emotion that does not ask for words; it asks for company. And we confuse the two more often than we realise.
To truly be there for someone, we do not need to try to fill every space at all costs. Sometimes it is better to leave room, not to alter the other person’s pace or push them towards a closure or conclusion they are not yet ready for; simply to stay there, close by, without needing to intervene. And staying is already a way of saying something, even when not a single word is spoken.
And the person receiving it can tell. They can feel the difference between a silence that supports and a silence that abandons, even if it is sometimes difficult to explain exactly what that difference is. Perhaps we feel it in the body more than we understand it through reason; there is a different kind of calm when someone stays without asking for anything in return, without expecting us to be a certain way in order for them to remain.
Not all silences accompany us in the same way. There is also the silence of someone who does not know what to say and stays quiet for fear of getting it wrong, the silence of someone who stays because they do not know how to leave, but do not really know how to be there either. Although these silences may look the same from the outside, they feel different; they have another texture, another temperature. The silence that accompanies is not the silence of someone who has nothing to offer, but of someone who has understood that what they have to offer is precisely that, their unconditional presence.
Offering that kind of silence is not something we are born knowing how to do. Most of us first learn to fill, to fill the air with a question, a piece of advice, a reassuring phrase that says more about our own discomfort than about what the other person needs. So we need to unlearn that reflex, to learn to control the impulse to say something, to stay one second beyond what feels comfortable without intervening, without solving, with no gesture other than our presence.
We learn, above all, by tolerating our own discomfort. Because accompanying someone in silence is not easy. Often, it feels as though we are doing nothing, as though we are failing. And yet it is there, in that not doing, that what truly matters happens. Over time, that silence stops feeling like an emptiness that needs to be filled and begins to feel like what it really is, a space that supports, embraces and accompanies.
From the other side, allowing ourselves to be accompanied in this way has its own difficulties. Accepting that someone can stay and give us nothing more, and nothing less, than their company stirs something in us. We are used to affection being shown through doing, solving, contributing; receiving someone’s presence without any of those things can feel almost as uncomfortable as offering it. Learning to let ourselves be accompanied in silence is perhaps just as necessary as learning to accompany someone else. Accompanying and allowing ourselves to be accompanied are, ultimately, two sides of the same silence.
It may sound strange to write about what is not said, but perhaps we need to start talking about silence in the same way we talk about words, giving it the same attention, the same care, the same intention. Because silence, too, can be chosen, silence can be offered, and silence can be, without saying anything at all, the most honest way of saying, “I’m here.”
By MARÍA JOSÉ PALACIOS.
Originally published at www.mariajosepalacios.com.
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