Hi, it's Andy here and welcome to Radio Headspace and to Tuesday morning.

Long time ago I remember standing next to my teacher and looking at a sign on the wall.

And he said, if you can't improve on silence, then don't say anything at all.

Now that's a pretty high bar I think for most of us in life.

And it's difficult from a monastic context, it made a lot of sense.

Especially as well, let's face it, there wasn't a lot of conversation in the monastery

anyway.

I think out in the world is a little more challenging.

There's a part of that that has stuck with me ever since.

And I sometimes worry just putting more information, more words into the world.

Because it's hard to improve on silence.

Silence is such a beautiful thing.

We might find it unnerving at times, we might find it a little alien at times.

But if we take the time to be quiet and to allow thoughts to settle, then it can become

a really, yeah, say a really sort of beautiful thing.

And I wonder if words have become perhaps a little less powerful over time.

I don't know about you.

I find the relentless new cycle, the constant sort of flow of information.

It feels like there is just noise everywhere.

And most of this noise is words, the written word, the spoken word.

There is just a lot of words, a lot of information, a lot of noise in the world.

And yet we kind of have to say something.

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