Other's lives are not currency

I do not use other people's stories as currency. Silence is my comfort zone - the place I dive into self-inquiry. But I am an outlier in this understanding. Most people find silence uncomfortable, in truth - completely intolerable. Hence the small talk. No, the use of the adjective small to describe talk is not a coincidence, but rather a succinct and efficient label encompassing the entirety of happenings in small talk. In small talk, the thoughts are small, centered on the conceptual self "How do I sound, look, appear, seem to this other person?"  The words used are small, immature (as in not fully grown or understood), single syllable onomatopaeias (gutteral noises), the vocabulary of a child. The conversation is small, stunted, halted, superficial, boring. Talking about other's lives is a way to fill the silence. But other's lives are stolen goods, laced with toxic cancers of comparison, complaint,  and blame. Other's lives are used to develop a common enemy intimacy (Brene Brown), to commisserate with their suffering. That suffering manifests in the silence of having to come face to face with who we are in that moment of silence. Silence makes us face ourselves. No one really wants to do the work, to make the effort of understanding and knowing the self. Self inquiry takes effort. One way I developed to increase my comfort in silence was to picture this identity as a body silhouette chalk outline like a gingerbread cookie cut out. In this vision, only the outline exists. The space is empty and all things flow through. Nothing sticks. The outline is completely open to interpretation to anyone. This gives all the freedom to be, think, interpret as is appropriate. After all, opinions are owned and exist completely in the mind of the individual with that opinion. Certainly, any person can take an other's opinion and make it their own. But as an empty silhouette, I have nowhere to store an opinion. This keeps me free and allows me and the world I live to also be free. This is hardly profound, but life is simple. An ordinary, empty cookie cutter silhouette - ready, willing, and open.