I've spent the last few weeks preparing for a new semester. I'm teaching introductory sociology again after a hiatus of 6 or 7 years. Thinking I would probably never be teaching the course again I got rid of most of my notes and materials in the latest of my office moves....bad decision. So, I've been doing a lot of reading, refreshing myself on the materials I want to cover.
Two classic pieces for introductory sociology are C. Wright Mills "The Promise" in which the term "sociological imagination" is coined and Alan Johnson's "The Forest, the Trees, and the One Thing." Both emphasize the interrelationship of individuals and societies...people shape society and are shaped by society. One metaphor (analogy?) sometimes used to describe this relationship is that of a river. The banks of the river contain and structure the water flow, but over time the water itself starts to shift the banks, cutting a new path.
But, every time I read Johnson's article, I'm struck again by the importance of empty space. As he describes it, we can think of people as individual trees, but if we take those trees and put them near one another, we have created a forest. What creates the forest though, is not just the accumulation of individual trees, but the spaces between them. These empty spaces create the forest.
In many teaching training instructions we are advised to not be afraid of silence in the classroom, to give students time to respond, to not rush in with an answer. This is certainly true in intimate conversations, like those between a therapist and a client, but I find them, too, in my relationships with students. Sometimes the silence is needed to create a space for the words. Robert Krulwich has a great story that focuses on silence. He talks
about two Bible stories, Abraham and Isaac and Noah. He describes how
much of each story takes place in silence. (You can listen to it
here...http://www.radiolab.org/story/91898-in-silence/) Now, are these
silences because the recorder of the story thought the responses were
insignificant or are they silences because they hold meaning? Are the silent voices of women and minorities in history because they had nothing important to say or because nobody bothered to record them or because it is their silence itself that is meaningful.
It is reminiscent of Claude Debussy's quote, "Music is the space between the notes." It is the pattern, the rhythm, the distance of one from another that makes a series of notes music. In the same way, it is what happens in the space between people that creates a relationship.
