Every once in a while I get the question in one form or another which essentially boils down to “Why are you so silent?” . I get this question so often to a point where I thought maybe I could write a blog post as an explanation not justification because its not some kind of odd behaviour that needs a justification. So here it goes.

Everything I say below is just a biased opinion of mine in this giant Internet and was never intended as a reply to anyone in specific.

Why are you so different? Differences are just OK.

People tend to have different personalities and for the most part whenever someone finds another person who is different to their own characteristics they essentially see something as abnormal with them. I have met countless number of people where they have their own checklist of items to tick off to certify people as normal and most of them have “talk a lot” on top of the list and I don’t go well on that. Since they notice something abnormal in comparison to their own set of characteristics they start to question the things you think are ok. Its common human behaviour and it will be better to value differences along the quote “As long as you don’t affect the liberty of the other person its ok to be as you are now”.

Well I too for some part tend to think of people who speak a lot as little disturbing too but the point is that we are wrong on how we value people when we meet different set of people and go by the checklist factor. So I think its better to embrace the difference among humans as long as it adheres to the above rule. As much as you get infuriated when I ask you to be silent for an hour I get the the same amount as you ask me to talk pointlessly for an hour. Its just that best set of people are people who embrace the difference among themselves. By embrace you don’t have to accept everything as it goes its just you need to think a little different from by setting yourself apart from other people’s shoes.

You don’t talk a lot. You are missing a lot in life.

So this gets me to the next set of question do you really need to talk a lot to actually enjoy life. Its a pretty common misconception that people who don’t talk much are pretty much very missing a lot of things in their life. Maybe I am missing something I don’t actually need because I have my own league where I tend to enjoy a lot of things on solitude and silence. I am cranking out this blog post on a Saturday afternoon in a lonely room. Its a wonderful world too even if its not a 10/10 perfect one. You can’t have a single generically perfect world to experience happiness in life. So its common for one set of people to think that other people are missing something in their life because they don’t resemble the expectations. Maybe I have indeed missed a couple of things too but such is life. Convince me up as a good friend :)

Well you write a wall of text so why don’t you actually talk a lot too? (Reads your mind voice)

I am more open and expressive but I don’t talk a lot. Little contradicting but let me come up with something. Sometimes I find myself much more effective in communicating with others by writing a lot because you tend to put more care and effort compared to speaking all the time. Also listening well tends to bring up new things perceptions. When I talk, I talk well too and many would have noted when I talk for the first time like “Hey! he does talk!” . So its more like you can be expressive and silent too. My replies tend to be very long walls of text filled with redundant and explicit details as this one. Brevity is the wit of the soul and this idiot needs to learn a lot :)

Well you can’t progress and make a lot of money when you don’t talk a lot

I don’t know where this metric comes from at all but I haven’t found this to be true yet. When man is a political animal and even though one doesn’t like politics one must to know enough politics for survival and safety. So necessary amount of politics is ok in this regard. I am bit lacking in this area with respect to influencing people but I am good with my progress and money that I don’t find it a problem at all. Luckily these rules also go in hand with my programming goals where skill gets you good bucks and enough bang for the buck. But I will fail when I am present in a field that essentially needs talking but I am not interested in those as of now. Maybe you do. All the best!

But how can you have long relationships and close friends?

I belong to the rare breed of species who only speak a lot after a certain point of time and as things build up in time. Well to put it as a fact I am a little shy to start the conversation or break the ice when I have very new set of people. Its not like I am androphobic, I just need some time for things to loosen up a bit and then I will be just fine. I am fortunate enough to meet some very memorable people in life and I am bad though not worse in this regard, hey :)

Why do you always talk about programming? Get a life!

I am not a very good programmer (Feels like an imposter) but I do enjoy discussing programming and I don’t find it as a work related thing or that I talk about programming so that I look like a show off nerd to you. Its just that the amount of things I think you can do with programming to the world and yourself are insanely high. Things are highly interesting, hilarious and insightful as you look into the design of everyday things around you. I find the people who work on open source to be of high amounts of humbleness with respect to their work. I don’t know I just feel amazing to talk and learn more about computers.

I know a lot of people who are so passionate about Maths, Physics, Biology, etc. that they think its a very beautiful field to explore on and I had them speaking hours about black holes, Fermat last theorem, cloning, economics etc. that I don’t have the slightest clue about :) Their eyes just lit up as they get amazed about their field. I just nod all the time and try to learn from them. I do try to google their field to have some amount of understanding so that I don’t ask a highly silly question. Ya, I need to diversify and distract a bit.

Talk is cheap. Show me the code - Linus Torvalds

I program computers both at my job and for fun. As I started my journey I started noticing a pattern among programmers. Programmers on most part are not highly social. They are essentially filled with deep problems that take days and sometimes weeks to reach an “Aha!” moment and they persist with every ounce of strength to get to that moment. Programmers are essentially in a state called flow wherein you are deeply involved in a problem that even a second of distraction leads to the loss of flow which takes a substantial amount of time to recover. So most of the thing about programming is being calm and silent to actually grok through the problem. The “Aha!” moment is much for soul satisfying that people have strong desire to experience more and more of it.

They tend to communicate well on other forms of writing like mails, blogs, etc. on a clear basis. You can go to a conference where you can see a bunch of people enjoying sarcastic geek humour and talking to each other well but when it comes to problems they need a less distractive environment and hence prefer silence. So this brings us to point where some programmers are essentially filled with problems and they tend to find solving problems as more satisfying than talking their way off and are less social. Its a problem when you don’t speak at all but its definitely not a problem when you speak only for the essential things.

So next time when someone asks me “Why are you so silent? Have you ever thought about it?” I do have some kind of proof that I did indeed :)

Switches to other Emacs buffer and starts staring