Silence In John Cage's '4 33'

Music is a beautiful form of expression for anyone, whether it’s the actual musician, the composer, or the listener. It is a way for one to convey their feelings, thoughts, beliefs, about life in a manner that is basically impossible to recreate. John Cage’s piece “4’33” epitomizes the ideal of silence because equally as relevant as the notes played. As the legendary and iconic music composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote, “The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.” Silence is one of the most beautiful and quintessential parts of life as we know it. The Buddhists belief in “静“(jing, which means silence) because in silence you are able to fix your thoughts and think clearly. Although in this word when a person can treat you

wrong and you may want to do everything in your power to fix it, I might be important for one to do sit back and be in silence. The best thoughts, ideas, and even compromises can come from when you have necessary silence.

I believe that this is the natural and unalienable stubbornness instilled in everyone when they are born.

We all love to get our point across. It doesn’t matter if I’m in the middle of an argument and I realize that I’m wrong, I’m going to continue and argue that my point is correct. All of us want to be right whether it’s about what Avogadro’s number is or if my friend believes that I filed my taxes the wrong way. Some arguments that we have obviously have a right or wrong answer, for example, it is a known FACT that two plus two equals four. There is no way around, no matter what type of calculus you may want to bring into the argument, two plus two in four. If you think otherwise, I will gladly discuss your lack of intellectual agility or we can just let it be-it’s completely up to you. Anyways, there comes a time in life where we have to realize when to just be in silence is sometimes what you have to do to come to a common

ground.

I recently had to learn that silence is what I need in order for me to be in peace.

Love is something that we all essentially need to live a happy and abundant life. Although I don’t quite comprehend what love exactly means because, after all, I am only 16 years old, I have recently overcome a personal hurdle in my life. I was very interested in one person. I did not want anybody else on God’s green Earth. To cut the long, ambiguous, and rather annoying story, I will just let you know that things did not work out the way that I planned. I planned for us to be really, really good friends for nearly eternity. Due to my deep investment in one person, I lost sight of the important things in life. Whenever I would go to track practice, I would not focus on the repetitive cone drills, or the repeat 200s that we did during practice, I was constantly thinking about this one person. It made me go borderline insane after the ties were cut between

us.

It almost reminded of me of when my great grandmother passed away. It was like when we stopped talking, it reminded me of the emptiness and hollowness that I felt when my grandmother passed.

I felt very down. I have never felt this way about anyone before. I have never cried over a person that I have liked before until now. It is very rare for me to catch significant feelings over any person, which made this all so annoying and confusing.
Ironically, after I got over myself and eliminated the victim-like mentality that I had, I realized that Silence was really important. I would just go and meditate for sometimes hours at a time. I can happily say that I have washed my hands from this entire situation. Thank the Lord, the almighty man upstairs. Funny how this person did want anything to do with me and I still steadily chased them. Once I stopped doing that and I had a completely nonchalant attitude towards them that the person wanted to start talking to me again.

Silence was key in my decision to not entertain them because I knew that it was not in my best interest. This silence not only helps my decision-making but I have also given this person nothing but silence. I do not talk to them unless they hit me up first. I can finally say that I am happy. I feel so liberated. Now whether or not this person feels as liberated as I do, is a different story. Since I’m not longer entertaining them I’m sure that they have lots of down time where they can think in silence and figure it all out.