The Awkwardness of Silence

I think that many people feel uncomfortable when surrounded by silence. However, in most cases it seems that they feel most uncomfortable when someone else is in the room. What I mean is, when someone is alone reading a book or laying down and trying to fall asleep, silence is appreciated. But if one is sitting in a room alone with another person and there is silence, then people tend to feel awkward or anxious. On the other hand, many people have to listen to music or watch t.v when they fall asleep because they can't stand the silence. For me, there are some situations that are awkward when silence and others that aren't. The only time I'm by myself and require sound is when I'm driving. In my opinion, listening to music or watching t.v when reading, doing my homework, and sleeping is a distraction. Like I said, I think it all depends on the individual. I think that some people do talk too much simply to fill the air. People may feel almost guilty when they are alone with someone and there isn't conversation flowing. They think that they need to be the ones to carry on the conversation or else it will be awkward. I think that if people took more time to stop talking and listening to what the other person had to say, that many fights and arguments could be avoided. If people stopped expressing their opinions so frequently and listened to what other people thought, it would allow others to understand both sides of the argument instead of sticking strongly to their own. I also think that age plays a role in one's tendency to like or dislike noise. Young children and teenagers greatly enjoy music and like listening to sounds and music at all times of the day. However you tend to hear of older people and adults that are begging for silence. People that are older didn't grow up with as many forms of music, television, and movies as our generation did. They didn't sit around a t.v all afternoon or listen to I-Tunes or their I-Pod because those things weren't invented yet. Instead, they enjoyed going outside or playing with things around the house, not minding or even noticing the silence. I have experienced awkward silences when I am walking in the halls or talking on the phone with someone I am not very close with. When it comes to my best friends or my boyfriend, I don't get anxious if there is a short amount of time that we aren't talking. But if I'm talking with someone who I don't know very well, I feel pressure to come up with topics to talk about to fill the air. I think that our generation needs to be more comfortable with silence because if we begin depending on constant noise and feeling more and more anxious when silence fills the room, conversation between two people will become increasingly forced and manufactured. The best conversations come from flowing and natural thoughts, not forced ideas spit out to fill the silence and create a noise to ease our nerves.