Just saw a toot boosted to my feed that said, "A quiet person is either planning success or in unthinkable pain.

Just saw a toot boosted to my feed that said, "A quiet person is either planning success or in unthinkable pain. Silence doesn’t mean nothing—it means everything."

This kind of either/or thinking is one reason "quiet" people (people who do not conform in an extroverted society) are alienated and even considered suspect by some people.

Quiet people may be:
*Just observing situations or the environment
*Listening for something in particular
*Wrapped up in their own (non-success-related/non-pain-related) thoughts
* Not paying attention to you
* Tired -- and tired of all humanity's collective noise
* Uninterested
* Unwilling to participate because of tone, energy, or something else
* Non-speaking for whatever reason
* Deaf
* Neurodivergent
* In a state of absolute calm that does not require outward expression
* In the wrong group, and they know it
* Giving up because they've tried to speak too many times and were ignored or interrupted

The list goes on. Quiet people are quiet because of diverse reasons. And they contain multitudes, just like everyone else.

We don't have to be shouting all of the time, nor even talking all of the time, nor even making noise in another way all of the time to neither be plotting something nor in the depths of despair.

And I leave you with Neruda's poem, "Keeping Quiet."
https://www.awakin.org/v2/read/view.php?tid=2298

@Furthering I tacitly nod with agreement while reading this in silence.