A Chorus of Crickets

When I ask my students a question and no one has a response, after a while I say, "Cricket... cricket... cricket..." When all else is silence, what is left is the sound of chirping crickets (if you live where crickets do, too).

The sound of crickets, then, is a metaphor for silence; either literal silence or the absence of meaningful response.

Like many U.S. citizens/residents, I've been conditioned to be uncomfortable with silence. In recent years I've come to appreciate silence and even be comfortable with silences that others find awkward, but some silences (as in "the absence of meaningful response") still challenge me.

It isn't simply that I find them awkward. It isn't awkwardness at all. It's the "failure to communicate" that pushes me off balance.

Long ago I learned a mantra from one of my dearest friends: "Open, honest, maintained communication." I believe in communication the way coaches believe in discipline, or music teachers believe in practice; persistent, consistent, open, honest, and maintained communication grows understanding, and understanding grows all kinds of relationships: business/professional, collegial, familial, platonic, and romantic.

Therefore for most of my life, I've gotten worried when I could "hear the crickets." I'm a pretty good communicator, so when communication wasn't happening, I'd be out of my comfort zone and I got nervous. Coupled with a poor self-esteem that tended to paint silences in the worst possible terms, that anxiety created a positive feedback loop that made me feel worse.

Please note that those statements are written in past tense. "I got nervous," it "created a positive feedback loop," it "made me feel worse." That's how it has been in the past.

I still have poor self-esteem (though it's improving), but I am finding that silences are not creating the discomfort, worry, and bad feelings they would have in the past.

Part of it is that I've stopped trying to interpret it; sometimes a silence is just a silence.

Part of it is that I'm no longer so deeply invested in having things go "my way."

And part of it is that I have come to feel in my bones what I have always known in my head: communication is not one person saying something to another; communication is two (or more) people talking to and listening to one another, each working to make sure that what the other(s) heard is what s/he meant. If only one of the people is talking (or listening, or checking for understanding), then very little can be communicated.

Sure, silence can mean something. It probably does. But any guess as to what that meaning is will never be more than a guess. Knowing will have to wait until the silence is broken.

In the meantime, I'll enjoy the chirping of the crickets.