{"id":148406,"date":"2019-12-02T12:00:38","date_gmt":"2019-12-02T12:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=148406"},"modified":"2019-11-25T08:11:48","modified_gmt":"2019-11-25T08:11:48","slug":"kahlil-gibran-on-silence-solitude-and-the-courage-to-know-yourself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/12\/kahlil-gibran-on-silence-solitude-and-the-courage-to-know-yourself\/","title":{"rendered":"Kahlil Gibran on Silence, Solitude, and the Courage to Know Yourself"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIn much of your talking, thinking is half murdered. For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>Something strange and wondrous begins to happen when one spends stretches of time in solitude, in the company of trees<\/a>, far from the bustle of the human world with its echo chamber of judgments and opinions \u2014 a kind of rerooting in one\u2019s deepest self-knowledge, a relearning of how to simply be oneself, one\u2019s most authentic self. Wendell Berry knew this when he observed that \u201ctrue solitude is found in the wild places, where one is without human obligation\u201d<\/a> \u2014 the places where \u201cone\u2019s inner voices become audible.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that inner voice, I have found, exists in counterpoise to the outer voice \u2014 the more we are tasked with speaking, with orienting lip and ear to the world without, the more difficult it becomes to hear the hum of the world within and feel its magmatic churns of self-knowledge. \u201cWho knows doesn\u2019t talk. Who talks doesn\u2019t know,\u201d Ursula K. Le Guin wrote in in her superb poetic, philosophical, feminist more-than-translation of the Tao te Ching<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Two and a half millennia after Lao Tzu, and a century before Le Guin and Berry, Kahlil Gibran<\/strong> (January 6, 1883\u2013April 10, 1931) \u2014 another philosopher-poet of the highest order and most timeless hold \u2014 addressed the relationship between silence, solitude, and self-knowledge in a portion of his 1923 classic The Prophet<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n

When Gibran\u2019s prophet-protagonist is asked to address the matter of talking, he responds:<\/p>\n

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts;
\nAnd when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime.
\nAnd in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.
\nFor thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Kahlil Gibran, self-portrait<\/p><\/div>\n

Echoing Hermann Hesse\u2019s insistence on the courage necessary for solitude<\/a>, Gibran\u2019s prophet adds:<\/p>\n

There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone.
\nThe silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape.
\nAnd there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand.
\nAnd there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words.
\nIn the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells in rhythmic silence.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Complement this fragment of the The Prophet<\/em><\/strong><\/a> \u2014 an abidingly rewarding read in its totality \u2014 with sound ecologist Gordon Hempton on the art of listening in a noisy world<\/a> and Paul Goodman on the nine kinds of silence<\/a>, then revisit Gibran on the building blocks of true friendship<\/a>, the courage to weather the uncertainties of love<\/a>, and what may be the finest advice ever offered on parenting<\/a> and on the balance of intimacy and independence in a healthy relationship<\/a>.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Brain Pickings<\/em> is the brain child of Maria Popova, an interestingness hunter-gatherer and curious mind at large obsessed with combinatorial creativity who also writes for <\/em>Wired<\/em> UK and <\/em>The Atlantic<\/em>, among others, and is an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow. She has gotten occasional help from a handful of guest contributors<\/a>. Email: brainpicker@brainpickings.org<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 brainpickings.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIn much of your talking, thinking is half murdered. For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":148408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[1177,1636,642],"class_list":["post-148406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspirational","tag-inspirational","tag-kahlil-gibran","tag-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}