On Silence
“Even worse, I found myself once again breaking my own rules, what I guess I’d call the three barriers: Does this need to be said? Does this need to be said, by me? Does this need to be said, by me, right now? Most of what I said didn’t even make it past the first barrier.
Every year I have a growing appreciation for the power of the tongue. One word, one phrase, one insult, those can stick with a man for the rest of his life, and I know from having been on both sides many times. You can apologize, but you will never be able to take words back once they have left your mouth. It’s like plunging a knife into a tree. Pulling the knife out doesn’t change that the scar will be in the tree forever. ”
“All my life I have been raised among the wise, and I have found nothing better for the body than silence.”
In On Moving Forward I wrote a few paragraphs on discipline of speech:
“…there’s a reason why the sages of every single world religion say that silence is good for the soul: because it is. God, or nature, or whoever you believe designed us, my Judeo-Christian friends, they locked our tongue away behind not one but two cages: the teeth and the lips. When you think about your speech that way, about the effort it requires to remove your tongue from incarceration and about how frequently you use it for slander and gossip and hurtful language, and I mean really think about it, and you fully hold yourself accountable for all the wrong speech you’ve made in the past — you’re going to shut the hell up. For real. I’ve met thousands of men who talk too damn much and I have yet to meet a man who talks too little. Tells you something.”
I got a DM from someone along the lines of, you don’t tweet the same shit you used to tweet. The truth is that a lot of the stuff that gets the most engagement is either mean-spirited or designed to provoke anger, which the media discovered centuries ago. But let’s get real: if everything you put out into the universe is hurtful, a joke at someone else’s expense, or dunking on them behind their back, like, you’re a loser. When you go to bed that night and look back on what you accomplished that day, you did nothing except continue to be a loser, a critic, a gossip queen who adds nothing and creates nothing. What you focus on expands, and if this is what you are both taking in and putting out, it is what you will slowly become. And the internet being an extension of real life, that same loser energy you exude from your pores seeps out no matter where you are.
These same principles on wrong speech, for lack of a better term, carry even more damaging consequences in person. Especially once you’ve lived long enough to know how quickly words get twisted. If I say something to Peter about Paul, the next step is that Peter goes around, “Greg said this about Paul,” it gets lost in the game of telephone and the words shift further and further away from their original context. Sometimes it’s an accident, sometimes people have malicious intent. But then the final step, which inevitably always happens, is that it gets back to Paul: “Greg said this about you.” Paul’s first reaction is never going to be good for two reasons. First, your message will have gotten distorted. Second, he is going to say “why the fuck is he saying this behind my back instead of to my face?”
The first time I really gave this topic some thought was around 2016 or 2017. I used to gossip with people because it’s one of those things where if you don’t actively stop yourself from doing it, and you surround yourself with gossipy people, you are going to gossip. I was zoned out on the couch one day listening to people talk and suddenly realized how pathetic it all sounded, grown men talking shit about another man who wasn’t in the room to defend himself. That was when I put in the rule never say anything behind someone’s back that you wouldn’t say to their face. This way, when it gets back to them and they eventually confront you—which if they have a functional pair of nuts, they will—you’ll have no issue with standing on what you said.
I look back and that rule isn’t nearly enough. It’s much cleaner to operate on the basis of never talk about someone who isn’t in the room—PERIOD. The truth is that if you’re around a man with some sense, he is going to listen very carefully to the way you talk about people who aren’t present, he is going to assume that you talk the same way about him when he’s not present, and he is going to be 100% correct. Same as before, when you are someone who exudes big ladies-who-lunch energy, it doesn’t matter who you are around—you simply can’t stop yourself.
What does this all this ruminating over wrong speech lead to?
You guessed it: silence.
Because when you’re breaking bread with someone, or on the phone, or texting, and they try to turn the conversation to a third party, a disciplined mind immediately flashes a bright red stop sign: this is not something I do. If you call me, we’re talking about you, we’re talking about me or we’re talking about ideas. But you don’t want to be the guy who says something like pardon me, I must stop you right there, sir, because you see, I have a RULE where we do not talk about people who aren’t in the room. Then you’re nothing but a self-righteous and condescending douche. No different than informing someone that you don’t drink or don’t give a shit about politics or news or sports or any of the other things that people talk about all day yet have zero effect on their lives. Keep it to yourself, homeboy. No one cares. The best response is almost always silence and a smile.
“Be careful in speaking; with your rivals from prudence, with others for the sake of appearance. There is always time to add a word, never to withdraw one. Talk as if you were making your will: the fewer words the less litigation. In trivial matters exercise yourself for the more weighty matters of speech. Profound secrecy has some of the lustre of the divine. He who speaks lightly soon falls or fails.”
It’s funny because if I was reading this, I’d be like, no shit that the guy who has a wire fraud charge would want to be more careful with his words. But you know what the craziest part of it all is? I got in a lot more trouble for keeping my mouth shut than anything else. Omission is a lie and omission of material facts constitutes fraud. The worst of my offenses was to continue running a business as if everything was normal while having surreptitiously taken out fraudulent loans. When I say worst, I’m speaking holistically, like the damage I did not just in the eyes of the law but in the eyes of my personal relationships. People weren’t happy about the crime, but for those closest to me, many of whom also happened to be investors, they were much more hurt by the fact that I didn’t just sit them down and tell them about all this shit. For decades, our relationships had been on that level, no secrets kept, all cards on the table, that type of deal. And they’re absolutely right! I’ve been on the other end and know exactly how it feels, like, “why couldn’t you just have told me about this?” Nor was this a new lesson for me, which makes it even dumber. If you pull a friend off to the side, man to man, sit him down and say listen, I really fucked up and I want to be up front with you about it—they’re going to be receptive. Even if they’re not, you still walk away with your integrity and dignity intact. But for the most part, people can handle bad news. What they can’t handle is being blindsided by someone who they thought they can trust. And this is where I feel compelled to caution you on the risks of silence.
I have thought about this topic deeply—in silence, obvs—and have no better way to tie it all together except to say life is hard.
Yes, you can cause a lot of damage by false speech, lies, gossip, slander and hateful language. That part is straightforward.
You can also cause a lot of damage with speech that may be well-intentioned, but by virtue of being thoughtless with your choice of words or your tone, your words end up hurting someone else. Maybe it sounded good in your mind, maybe it was what you believed to be the truth, but still, it wasn’t well-received. Maybe “it wasn’t what you said, but how you said it.” Maybe you didn’t pause, stop and think about how your words could be perceived, maybe you didn’t put yourself in the shoes of the other person before you unlocked not one, but two cages and let your tongue carelessly unleash its poison. You weren’t intentionally wrong, but you were wrong.
Finally, you can cause a lot of damage with silence. Not necessarily in the “fraud by omission” sense, which I guess presupposes that you had something foul to cover up in the first place, but by the fact that there are a lot of times where you really should speak up. Where were you there, why didn’t you defend me? What kind of friend, what kind of husband, what kind of MAN are you? Silence, at its worst, is the mark of a coward. If evil is taking place right in front of you, and you avoid it or run from it, there is no way around the fact that you’re a coward. You were wrong. And these types of regrets—failure to speak up or failure to act—are the most painful kind of regret. I have a billion regrets over things I’ve said or done, I have maybe five regrets over the things I DIDN’T say or do, and there’s no question, the five sting worse than the billion.
That’s why I say life is hard, at least once you’ve fine-tuned your mind to hold yourself accountable for these innumerable tiny moral dilemmas. Every day is a tightrope. You must keep your lips sealed, practice severe self-discipline and avoid wrong speech. At the same time, being silent when you shouldn’t be silent is a mortal sin. There is a balance there, brother, and it is one which you are guaranteed to never master.
Honestly, if I was reading this, I’d probably say fuck you for writing this and bringing it to my attention, because now I can’t un-think these thoughts. A mind expanded cannot return to its original shape. But if you now find yourself zapped by minor shocks of guilt and shame, I shouldn’t have said that, I should’ve said that in a different way, I should’ve spoke up there when I didn’t, and so on, just remember: these are the prices you pay on the quest to reach a higher degree of perfection.
Speech is worth silver and silence worth gold,
GB
