There has been an adage for centuries that we have all heard: "The good silence was never written".
Attributed by many to Dante Alighieri, it seems more likely that it is a slight variation of a verse by Iacopo Badoer, an Italian librettist and poet who lived in the seventeenth century.
It is an expression used both to criticize a person who has said something inappropriate or unintelligent, and to invite someone to think before saying something that could turn out to be wrong or otherwise out of place.
Its meaning pushes us to consider the fact that the beauty of knowing how to remain silent at the right moment has never been praised enough but, from what I see every day, this beauty is not cultivated by many.
We live in an era in which there is a sort of "horror vacui", of fear of the void, so we often tend to fill moments of sharing with words, because silence makes us uncomfortable and this is one of the reasons why, taking a trivial example, we are often uncomfortable in the elevator when we find ourselves with complete strangers having to travel several floors.
Unfortunately, this inability to remain silent and to know how to manage moments of emptiness often pushes us to say things of little use, when it goes well, but also things that would be much better not to say.
They should have educated us from childhood to the fact that it's one thing to speak to say something interesting and useful, but another to say something just to get air in your mouth.
Today we look together at the nuances of silence.
Good vision!