Brian Smith reflects on how silence can be a healing force.
Golden rays filtered through my window when the morning’s hush was broken by a relentless chirp. I’d left my apartment window open for a cool breeze, and the bird’s song, though cheerful, felt like an intrusion. It stripped away my peace and made me strangely resentful. I knew I was being unfair — after all, a bird’s song is just a bird’s song — but in that moment, it felt personal.
Later that day, as a medical student in an outpatient clinic, I met a patient burdened by deep grief. I tried to comfort them with words. I offered reassurances, empathetic phrases and follow-up questions. But the more I spoke, the more they retreated into themselves.
I wondered if I had become that chirping bird — filling quiet moments simply because silence felt uncomfortable.
The next patient I saw had lost a loved one recently. They described how their world had lost all color. And then they stopped. I felt my heart race, tempted to fill the quiet with something — anything. Instead, I met their eyes and gestured to my heart, as if to say that I had no words to capture what I was feeling. I let the silence linger. One breath. Two breaths. They stared at me.