Thank You for Saying Nothing.

I hate driving.  My wife is fine with it, so she is usually the driver of our family.  When were off on our anniversary last year, she was having trouble parking our minivan nicely.  I kept making jokes about it, thinking we were having fun, but it really started to weigh on her.  The last day of the anniversary she let me know how much it was upsetting her and making her not want to drive.  I didn't realize it was affecting her like that.  I apologized and said I'd try to avoid making comments in the future.

Several months later, we went out for dinner, and she parked the car at a fairly crooked angle.  When we were getting back into the car, she commented at how crooked it was, and I made some comment to the effect of "You didn't hear it from me" or something to indicate that I wasn't saying it.  She thought about it for a moment and recognized that I hadn't said anything to her about her parking since that conversation.  I've noticed it a few times, but decided it wasn't worth saying.  It was nice to get affirmation that my silence was appreciated.

One thing I know from raising children and dogs is the importance of positive reinforcement.  Children will often act out because it's the only way they get attention.  Dogs can be unpredictable when they are punished when doing something wrong, but don't know what the right thing to do is.  For both, they are often given praise when they obey a command, or exhibit an appropriate immediate action.  However, rarely do they get praise for just behaving in general.  One thing I've learned over the years is to praise them when they are just minding their own business or simply not misbehaving.  It's important for them to understand when their lack of action is the appropriate behavior rather than just assuming it's good because they aren't getting reprimanded.  They need to know their silence is appreciated.

I deal with this often as it relates to ally dynamics.  As someone who fits almost every privileged demographic, I am typically relegated to the role of ally.  However, as an ally, one thing that is important to learn is when to speak up and when to shut up and let the oppressed speak for themselves.  I don't have a great concept of when to do which thing.  I tend to err towards silence.  If I do that when I should speak up, I can get called out for it, and it serves as a learning experience.  However, I often feel that my silence shows that I don't care, which is not true.  If I stay silent appropriately, though, I get no reinforcement.  It would be useful to know when my silence is appreciated.

I have a pinned tweet on my Twitter profile: I find that the character limit on Twitter can make me a more thoughtful person.  I start to write, try to edit it to get my point across as clearly as possible within those limits, and by the time I get everything polished, I come to my senses and delete the whole thing.

I have written a lot of tweets that I never published.  I have a lot of questions that I've never asked.  I have a lot of thoughts that I've never shared.  For the most part, that's a good thing.  However, I never get feedback on the things I don't say.


If I post something that gets a negative reaction, I learn from it, likely never to post something like that again, but also to listen to why it got a negative reaction.  If I post something that gets a positive reaction, I learn from it, and I try to post more like it or learn what people liked about it.  On the other hand, I don't know what reaction the post I didn't publish would have received.  I get no feedback on if I should have posted it, and I get no feedback on if I was wise to delete it.


Sometimes it would be nice to just be told "thank you for saying nothing."