After seven decades of living, I've discovered that the wisest people my age have mastered something most of us spend a lifetime avoiding: the profound power of knowing when to say absolutely nothing.
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Last week at the grocery store, I watched an elderly gentleman ahead of me in line.
The cashier had clearly made an error, charging him twice for something.
The younger man behind him launched into a detailed explanation of what went wrong, voice rising with each word. but the older gentleman simply smiled, waited for a pause, then said quietly, "These things happen."
The cashier's shoulders relaxed as the mistake was fixed in seconds.
I thought about how much wisdom lives in knowing when words become unnecessary furniture in a room.
After seven decades on this planet, I've noticed something about the people my age who seem most at peace with themselves and others.
They're the ones who've discovered that silence can be the most eloquent response of all.
The weight of unspoken words
Have you ever noticed how the most profound moments in life often arrive wrapped in silence? When my son brought home the woman who would become his wife, every fiber of my being wanted to voice my concerns.
She was nothing like I'd imagined for him.
Too quiet, I thought, and too different from our boisterous family but something made me pause: Maybe it was remembering my own mother-in-law's initial coolness toward me, or perhaps it was simply recognizing that my son's eyes held a certainty I needed to respect.
So, I said nothing beyond a warm welcome.
I let the silence between my worries and my words do its work.
Ten years later, she's the daughter I never had, and her quiet strength has taught our entire family about grace under pressure.
Had I filled that initial space with my doubts, I might have poisoned something beautiful before it had a chance to bloom.
Learning the language of pause
Teaching high school for 32 years gave me a front-row seat to the power of strategic silence.
Teenagers, despite what many believe, are incredibly perceptive.
They know when you're about to launch into a lecture.
They brace for it, walls going up before you've even opened your mouth.
But silence? Silence disarms them.
When a student would act out, instead of immediately responding with consequences and explanations, I learned to simply stop.
More often than not, they'd fill that silence with their own recognition of what went wrong.
"I know, Ms. M., I shouldn't have..." they'd begin and, in that moment, they owned their behavior in a way my words never could have forced.
This same principle has followed me into retirement.
When conflicts arise, when someone says something hurtful, when life throws its inevitable curveballs, I've learned that my first response doesn't need to be a response at all.
The discipline of not defending
One of the hardest-won lessons of emotional intelligence is understanding that not every accusation requires a defense, not every misunderstanding needs immediate correction.
My sister and I once had a falling out that lasted five years.
It started with harsh words exchanged at our mother's funeral, both of us raw with grief and looking for someone to blame for the thousand small regrets that death brings.
For months, I composed letters in my head, explanations of why she was wrong, why I was justified but I never sent them.
Instead, I let the silence stretch between us like a fallow field.
In that silence, something shifted like seasons changing: When we finally spoke again, neither of us rehashed the old argument.
We'd both used those quiet years to do our own internal work, and the silence had allowed our wounds to heal without the constant picking that words would have brought.
Silence as an act of love
My second husband was a man of few words.
After my first marriage ended in my fifties, I thought I wanted someone who could match me word for word, someone who'd discuss literature with me late into the night.
Instead, I fell in love with a man who showed his affection through actions rather than declarations.
At first, his quietness frustrated me: Didn't he have opinions? Didn't he want to share his thoughts?
But gradually, I realized his silence was full of attention.
While I was busy crafting the next thing to say, he was actually listening to m words and to what lived beneath them.
He taught me that sometimes the most loving thing you can do is create space for someone else's words, someone else's pain, someone else's joy, without immediately trying to match it with your own story or solution.
The morning practice
These days, I wake at 5:30 without an alarm.
The first hour of my day belongs to silence; just me, my tea, and my journal (the kind where I simply let thoughts rise and fall like breath).
This morning ritual has become my training ground for the kind of emotional intelligence that only comes with age and practice.
In that silence, I notice the urge to fill space with words, with plans, with mental chatter.
And I practice letting it pass.
It's like strengthening a muscle I didn't know I had when I was younger, always so eager to prove my worth through words, through being helpful, through having the right answer.
Final thoughts
The most emotionally intelligent people I know at this age have learned that wisdom often sounds like nothing at all.
It looks like the space between stimulus and response, and feels like the peace that comes from not needing to have the last word, or sometimes any word at all.
This is about recognizing that silence can be an active choice, a gift we give to others and ourselves.
After seven decades of living, we've earned the right to let the silence do some of the heavy lifting.
Surprisingly, it often says exactly what needs to be said!
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