This is guilt, if anything is guilt: not to multiply a loved one's freedom by all the freedom we can find in ourselves. We have, in loving, only this one task: to let each other go. For holding on is easy for us, nothing we need learn.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke in DEAR FRIEND by Eric Torgersen
The notion of silence appears to unsettle—or puzzle—no small number of people of all walks of life...Something as "unproductive" as silence is not often taken seriously. The evaluation of silence differs from culture to culture. In the West, if you notice that someone is silent for a prolonged period of time, the tendency might be to ask, "are you all right?" Or the silence might be interpreted as a sign of unbalanced introversion or isolation or passive aggression. In India, they would say of the silent one, Ah muni! (Ah, there is a holy soul!)
