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When Silence Is Deafening
Words left unsaid always sound loudest in the end.
Posted March 7, 2017
The decision to withhold information seems small at first. Silence, when you could have revealed who you’d seen for lunch that day. But such decisions can snowball over time to become shameful or compromising secrets, catapulting one into a state of psychological emergency. It’s akin to the butterfly effect: A tiny act or calculation eventually and invisibly sculpts a person’s relationships, even his or her identity.
So just get it off your chest already, you say! Ah, but that is complicated, as any keeper of deep secrets knows. The decision to conceal or to reveal is always a trade-off, and our April cover story, “Unlocking the Vault,” will help clarify what is at stake for all involved.
A secret can be polished into a private narrative that is useful—a sort of misshapen pearl that is worn internally. This works because psychological states that feel crushing can be reframed as empowering. Secrets can be a catalyst for action and insight and still remain concealed. Many people work tirelessly on behalf of a cause or condition that has great personal resonance without disclosing just how they themselves came to be guests at the table.
And yet we rarely have full control over our secrets. They can leak out in myriad ways, including nonverbally. Perhaps the quality of one’s silence changes— sometimes a tell in itself. In the course of a routine informational interview, FBI agent Joe Navarro ("Agent Provocateur”) noted a fleeting hand tremor at the mention of one man’s name. Navarro instantly knew that something was up. The slightest perturbation of a cigarette was, in the language of chaos theory, the butterfly wing that triggered years of intrigue, an odyssey that ultimately may have altered the outcome of the Cold War.
As Haruki Murakami writes, “Words left unsaid always sound loudest in the end.”
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I hope you'll enjoy the just-published stories referenced above, and consider obtaining the print edition, now on newsstands, from which this note is expanded. ~KP
