The Art of Silence

You know the old proverb “Silence is golden”?
Of all the essential guidance I’ve offered students over many years, trusting the silence remains at the top of the list, and so I commend it to you anew.
As opposed to the dark, foreboding void of nothingness we fear silence to be, a void in which we stand naked, lose our way, fumble, and fail, in truth, silence provides a world of possibility to learn who we are as storytellers.
In the silence we are truly seen. In the silence we glimpse who we truly are. In the silence who we are reveals itself. 
But we do not trust the silence, do we? We rush, we race, we push, ever determined to show our acting moments, to prove we are good/great/amazing, to trump the last 50 people in line—a perfect recipe for failure and the exact result we fear will come in the silence we feverishly work to avoid.
In the stillness of silence are mystery, secrets, and answers. Example: “To be, or not to be, that is the question.” 
And, this, my friends, is the exact point. In the silence lives concurrently the question and the answer.
The silence allows you to solve the mystery, to learn the secrets, and to answer the questions about you and your

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