The Beneficial Sound Of A Bit More Silence

I first wrote the following paragraphs as a response to a recent post on Penigma's blog-site (http://penigma.blogspot.com/). You can check-out his site in order to see the original context in which they were written. I only occasionally double-up when it comes to posting my comments, but I thought that these particular comments also do pretty well outside of their original context. So I've decided to reproduce them--with a few changes--and here they are:

I was selected to give the best man's speech at a friend's wedding several years ago. I told the audience that the groom wasn't so much a leader as a superb follower, and this was because he wasn't so much a talker as a quiet, analytical listener.

This is to suggest that, due to the fact that he actually listens closely more often than he talks, he always seems to associate with sensible people. This also means that he avoids the trade-marked trendy crowd, and the culturally-motivated crowd, and the self-righteous people who are likely to look silly a few years from now, but who are at present so myopically attached to their short-sighted viewpoints that they fail to foresee this.

In this way, he's actually not just a great follower, but a follower after whom others can model themselves, if they wish to take a not-exactly-popular but certainly smart "long-view" look on life. So he isn't just a discerning follower, which would be more than good enough. He's also a quiet leader, at least to those who are patient enough to also be discerning.

I think most all of us could benefit by talking less and listening more in this needlessly loud, often uninformed world.