Often the Best Thing to Say is… Nothing!

Frank Gusenberg was a gangster who went down in a hail of gunfire during the Valentine’s Day Massacre. As he lay near death, a policeman asked who had shot him. Frank’s very last words were, “Nobody shot me!” Unsurprisingly, during his career he had proudly borne the nickname “Tight Lips” Gusenberg.

Perhaps “Tight Lips” took it a bit too far, but there is a good case to be made for silence. The Bible teaches “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven…a time to keep silence, and a time to speak…” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)

There is indeed a time to keep silence. The problem is that nature, especially human nature, abhors a vacuum. Particularly in our modern media era, we have a hard time with silence. We rush to fill in the blank spaces, to say words just to say something. Better babble than silence. Doubt me? Just listen to “talk radio”. Hello? Hello?

One of the hardest things when preparing a witness for trial is to teach him to govern his tongue, to listen carefully to the question, to consider it, to pause, and answer the exact question precisely, but no more. A moment or two of silence is a good practice. How often have I seen a witness babble on, giving himself rope aplenty with which to hang himself, while the questioning lawyer cheerfully leads him from gaffe to gaffe.

This is not about not telling the truth. It’s about not saying too much, or not saying anything at all when the answer should be limited, or absent. There are times to be frank, but there are times when it’s wiser to steer the question away. Political and religious discussions, especially when they get heated, are good examples of this.

And sometimes silence, in its own right, is truly golden. What can be more precious than two old friends just sitting on the end of the dock watching the sun set, barely a word said?

Silence is as deep as eternity, speech as shallow as time. Thomas Carlyle