THE BEAUTY OF SILENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21118, 27 February 1932, Page 6 (Supplement)

THE BEAUTY OF SILENCE.

f RECKLESSNESS OF TO-DAY. S THE MODERN YOUNG. BY NINA KINGCOME WATTY. A generation is growing up which does not know the meaning of silence. It ! lives in a world of chatter, and rush, and mechanised clamour. Peace, quietude, silence and the reflective and meditative habit of mind which flow from these old :l possessions of the race have no place in the experience or vocabulary of the modern youth of our towns and cities. The incessant restlessness of the present generation, with its ceaseless rush from home to work, from work to home, and from'-hoffle again to dance hall, picture show, picnic or party, imposes a feverish nicntatity'-fafal to the intellectual repose and calm thought from which fine character emerges. With the new habit has come, too, a new vocabulary foreshortened and clipped—forged in the heat of;' jerky, noisy movement; and, with it, reactions in family life not always pleasant to contemplate. The family circle, round the family hearth, once the sheltered nursery of charm and modesty, self-restraint,:-'thrift, personal affection, common interests; the garden in which flourished pleasant interchange of ideas and the thought of , consideration for others, has passed 'into the limbo of forgotten things. Modern youth has adopted St. Vitus as its patron saint. The loss, temporarily, we may hope, of so many of the virtues of an earlier gen-eratibhj--need not, of-course, blind us to /certain definite and substantial gains to character inherent in that changed manner of life, with which modern youth sometimes astounds us Quite definitely greater freedom and independence of movement have contributed to a moie sharply-defined individuality and to greater self-reliance. If we have a more pioriounced self-assertion, not always pleasantly manifested, we hav<? also a more pronounced expression of personality than was permitted to the youth of an earlier . day. And if the modern young arc inclined to display a sad disregard for personal obligations they owe something of the.fault to the older, generations whose legacy" to "the youth of to-day was a universe dominated by material values, 111 which the worldly wisdom of self " aggrandisement and the worldly folly 01 altruism, have been made too apparent. To-day's Youth. Granted, however, that self-possession,, self-reliance and self-expression are the clear gains of to-day's youth from its * characteristic modes of life, we must still • deplore that these fine flowers of charac- ! ter are coming to fullness in a noise- \ filled and silence-banished world. 'JL -All literature and all life bear witness tr> the value of silences. The moments of quiet, when deep, undisturbed thought mid emotion may have their way with us, are potent with personal enrichment. The springs of character are cleansed and renewed in the silences of life. Out of the stillness the world s greatest songs have been born. In quietness the great ones of earth have found their message to the ages. Even the harassed mother of modern youth, distracted by the rackety comings and goings of her family, finds in the pause and peace of their absence the means of physical «nd emotional renewal that rightly should come from thenpresence at the family hearth. loutii, to-dav, is utterly impatient of silence. " Let's do something," " Let's go somewhere," are its slogans. Its conversation is chatter. Its leisure is noise-filled. Its pleasures are punctuated with intermittent din. In its excursions to the silent places, by lake and sea and shore and bush, it takes its pet noises with it. It is a pity, for we sec to-day youth as both the victim and the votary of noise. Maybe it is a passing phase of an age that has surrounded itself with an environment of mechanical clamoui. Let us hope so. For there is reason for misgiving about any generation that can neither appreciate nor enjoy ' the silence that is in the starry sky, the sleep that is among the lonely hills."