Silence is Golden II

A lot of my friends read for pleasure, my wife reads for pleasure - for some peculiar reason I struggle to read for pleasure. I know that this means I miss out on a lot of good stories and so recently I asked 6 or 7 of my friends to recomment one must read book that I should get and promptly ordered them all from Amazon. Anyway, so I have this huge pile of books to read now and it will probably take me about a year to get through them all.

I've started with David Gemmell's "Legend" - for a two reasons - firstly, one of my closest friends is a huge fan of his books (see the Gemmell Mania website for just how big a fan!!) and so I have been meaning to try at least one of this books for ages and secondly, it might sound a bit morbid, but the fact that David Gemmell died recently was the kick in the backside that made me think that I should read more. That might sound a bit odd and even a little morbid, but there you go.

So, I am progressing slowly through the book. Slowly, because I am trying to make sure that I read it properly - I have a tendency to "speed read" because of all the reading I do at work and that is probably why I don't read for pleasure much. I don't find it very relaxing - whereas just reading a chapter or two before going to sleep in the evening is very relaxing, but it takes a positive effort on my part to pace my reading for enjoyment rather than for overall understanding and rapid completion.

Anyway - last night I got to a passage in the book which really rang true and made me smile. I don't have the book to hand otherwise I might quote the passage. So you'll have to make do with my recollection instead. Two of the key characters are chatting in front of a roaring fire - Serbitar is trying, not very well, to make light conversation with Rek and bemoaning his lack of skill in this area. Rek makes an observation about friendship and that true friends are happy to be silent together.

This is so true - I have an old and close friend, Dave, who I don't see as often as I would like these days. But we used to spend many a long hour at my house pottering about on the computers, listening to music with very little conversation going on. And I remember Dave commenting once about being such good friends that being together with nothing being said was just fine.

Similarly, a friend that I have not known quite as long, said something similar. We were online using Skype (internet telephony) chatting, or rather not chatting recently - once just the two of us, but another time with 3 or 4 other people. We were both / all quite happy in what Stuart described as "companionable silence" (see previous blog entry).

And finally, the weekend before last, Marie and I drove to Surrey and back - and spent about 7 hours in total in the car. Most of that time spent not saying anything. It was just nice to be with her.

So the next time you are with a friend or a loved one and you are stuck for words, don't worry too much just enjoy that companionable silence.