Improving Our Talking Life : Page 12

The more one thinks about it the more one comes to feel that talk is life's visible spark and circuit, the magnetism that holds the human race together. Even deaf-mutes cannot live together without their sign talking. It is so important to human beings that, as their bodies cannot live without food and drink, their spirit likewise seems to wither without talk. That is why, next to outright mayhem and execution, the worst punishment governments know to inflict on human beings is solitary confinement. In retreat houses, the hardest mortification spiritual directors impose is silence. Those who have gone through the experience know that during a three-day self-imposed silence the very world seems to stop — and ideas turn upside down. The keenest joy after such a retreat is not the prospect of a good dinner, but the anticipation of a good talk.