November 29, 2025
I’ve thought about this more than I probably should, and honestly, silence is a strange thing. It’s peaceful until it isn’t. Calming until it turns the lights on in the basement of your brain. A warm hug until it suddenly feels like you’re trapped in a cabin with your own thoughts, thoughts that you’ve been very successfully avoiding by staying busy, scrolling endlessly, or listening to a podcast that teaches you absolutely nothing except that two comedians have very strong opinions about bagels.
Silence is unnerving because most of us don’t actually want to hear what we sound like on the inside. I know that sounds dramatic, but tell me it’s not true. The moment the world quiets down, all the stuff you shoved into the back room of your mind starts tiptoeing out like, “Hey… remember me? I’m that unresolved worry from 2014.”
People say “ignorance is bliss,” and I think that applies most brutally to our own thoughts. If you don’t know what’s in there, you can pretend you’re fine. You can keep pushing forward, keep moving fast enough to stay ahead of your own emotional echo. But when the silence settles, the echo catches up. And sometimes it’s whispering. Sometimes it’s yelling. And sometimes it’s just sitting next to you on the couch eating chips like it pays rent.
Silence forces honesty. And honesty requires courage. Because once you hear your own thoughts clearly, you can’t pretend they’re someone else’s problem.
But here’s the twist most people don’t notice: silence is also where the breakthroughs happen. Not the loud, cinematic changes, the quiet ones. The moments when you finally understand why you reacted the way you did. The moments when the knot in your chest unravels just enough for you to breathe. The moments when you realize the thing you feared wasn’t as monstrous as you made it out to be.
There’s a reason people get their best ideas in the shower. It’s one of the few places left on Earth where your phone isn’t screaming at you. No notifications. No updates. Just water, steam, and your brain casually serving you epiphanies like a waiter who’s tired of your nonsense.
Still, silence comes with discomfort, and discomfort is always a sign something important is happening. Silence is like a flashlight, it reveals, it exposes, it guides. And sometimes it lands on things you’d rather not see. But without that light, you can go years walking in circles, bumping into the same emotional furniture, wondering why your shin always hurts.
So if silence feels unnerving, maybe that’s a good sign. Maybe it means you’re on the edge of clarity. Maybe you’re closer than you think to an answer you’ve been avoiding. Or maybe you’re just realizing your brain has a lot to say, and it’s been waiting for you to stop long enough to listen.
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💬 Your Turn
So… What is it about silence that’s so unnerving?
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