Life in Silence

It has been maybe ten minutes and my mind is still trying to absorb everything from the presentations today, there was certainly a lot to think about. Hopefully at some point this week I will be able to find the time to take each presentation and give it the attention it deserves but at the present moment I can't seem to think of anything else but a quote from Joe:
"We would not know rhythm except for the silence between the beats."
...fuck he has a good point... My whole life it seems that I have heard nothing but the vices of silence. Its a sign of weakness or nervousness or ignorance. Any professional will tell you that an overly prolonged silence is fatal in a presentation. We are told to speak up in class and get noticed, after all no one can write a letter of recommendation for the silent kid in the corner. The quiet souls of this world find their spaces constantly assaulted with social media and the pressure to achieve and succeed, to stand out. Silence does not achieve these goals, ambitions, dreams, futures or expectations. Bull shit.
The parallel I can think to make was already made by John Lennon:
"Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans."
My life right now is full of nothing but plans. I schedule time to study, time to go to class, time to speak to professors, time to apply for graduate school, time to discuss career plans, time to make my time. Yet I ask anyone about how they used their time in college and no one seems to remember much of tests or homework or career paths, however everyone seems to have that memory of streaking at 3 am across campus or that one mind blowing concert experience the night before an 8 am class. The beats are still there certainly, those tests are very much real as any student will attest yet without the silence between the tests it would be meaningless white noise. When was the last time you asked someone their favorite television show and they said the snow from the disconnected channel? Life without silence is not life yet the beats are the only thing we, as a society, seem to care about because those are the moments we think we have control over. A composer, when creating sheet music, controls the tempo and volume of the sounds with notes. He uses pauses sure but it would be hard to imagine that composer creating a song with the sole intent of incorporating pauses. We do not control silence, it envelopes us. We do not control life, we live it.
Now do not mistake me, I am not advocating anyone to renounce all worldly obligations and rename themselves "talks-to-squirrels" because that would not exactly be living either. A song needs both silence and beats, so too do we need both plans and the spontaneous.
I used to look at my childhood with a great deal of embarrassment and disappointment. Silence seemed to be my best friend as I was that shy kid in the corner that no one could get more than a few words out of. I simply did not feel comfortable leaving my bubble and because of that I always felt I had missed out on so many opportunities. Now I see, my silence was simply my observations. My mouth may have been closed but my mind was always open. Every beat I saw, I absorbed. My silence has given me a unique appreciation for the music of others, a gift for which I am incredibly thankful now. It seems contradictory but in my life, silence was never ignorance but knowledge. Something to think about.