In some languages there is a word for the silence between two people who understand each other. In English, we have the "awkward silence", an expression which treats an ordinary pause as an emergency. The moment the talking stops, we reach for something, anything: the weather, the traffic, a sudden interest in the other person's shoes. This habit says more about our anxiety than about our conversations. A silence is awkward only if we believe that conversation is a performance, and that a pause is a failure of the performer. In the Finnish tradition, by contrast, a person who speaks little is not shy but courteous. He has decided that his words must earn their place. Silence has professional uses, too. A good interviewer knows that if she waits two seconds longer than is comfortable, the other person will say the interesting thing. A doctor, a negotiator and a priest are all trained to use the pause as an instrument. The silence is not empty. It is a space that the other person is invited to enter. Something is also lost when it disappears. If every pause is filled, the thought that had been forming in the quiet is replaced by the next sentence. We become expert at replying and weaker at reflecting. A conversation in which no one ever stops resembles a road without intersections: fast, uninterrupted and unlikely to arrive anywhere interesting. None of this is an argument for muteness. A good silence is chosen, not endured. But a society that cannot bear a pause may have forgotten that listening takes time. The next time a conversation falls quiet, you might try the least English thing in the world: wait.
Fiction note: All people, places and events in this text are fictional.