Yesterday, during 6th period lunch I attempted to sit at the table doing nothing for 10 minutes. My friends didn't notice until about 2 minutes into the experiment. They thought that since I was being silent and staring into space, something was upsetting me. After realizing that nothing they said or did could make me respond to them, they gave up for a couple minutes. No one else payed attention to me besides the people at my lunch table. Everyone else was carrying on with their lives. My appearance didn't seem to matter. I still didn't contribute to anyones conversation, so then my friends thought that I was mad at them. After listening to what the people at my table were talking about, I noticed that I was playing with my hands, and then with a water bottle. Two of my friends were having a staring contest (I inspired this by my silence) and I accidentally blurted out, "How do you keep your eyes op..." and stopped once I realized what I was doing. Once I broke the silence, I found it extremely hard to keep it going.
I didn't think my friends would react the way that they did. I thought that they would realize that I was keeping silent, respect it, and continue on with lunch. But they constantly kept badgering me about what was upsetting me. Also, I thought that other people would notice that as my friends were all laughing, eating and talking, I was sitting doing nothing. Nobody walked by and looked at me weirdly, they just got up, got their food, and sat back down.
This experience made me realize that people in our generation don't know how to handle silence. Going along with the 15 minutes of silence that happened the first day of class, people interpret silence in different ways. Some think it's awkward, calming, or rude. Some think it happens because of staring off into space, and some think it happens when people are mad at each other. Maybe it is because our generation is obsessed with being social at every moment in time. Personally, I think silence is awkward, but also kind of calming at the same time. There are many times that I have felt frustrated with myself for not knowing what to say to people, and people not knowing how to keep a conversation. I wonder how people from different time periods dealt with silence.
