When I was a child, my mother left a poem that had touched her under the glass screen of my study table. It was the poem of the wise old owl, and at the bottom, the author was stated as anonymous.
I was all but six at the time. I learned a new word: anonymous. But that is not the point of this essay. The point is that my mother told me to read that poem every day and follow what it said because, according to her, the owl truly was wise. The sentences went as such:
A wise old owl lived in an oak,
The more he saw, the less he spoke;
The less he spoke, the more he heard.
Why can’t we all be like that wise old bird?
Of course, as I grew older, I encountered the owl across cultures and traditions, where it was often welcomed as a bird heralding wisdom. Perhaps most famously, Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, was associated with the owl, as was her Roman equivalent, Minerva.
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When I grew old enough to get myself a tattoo, I even got an owl on my collarbone. It was partly a memento mori, inspired by Morrie from Tuesdays with Morrie, who told the author of his memoir that we should all have a little bird on our shoulders and ask it every day whether today was the day we were going to die. It was an interesting thought: Remember that life ends, and perhaps you will remember to live it. The tattoo was also to remember my father by. I got it a year after he died.
And finally, it was to remind myself of the wise old owl who had accompanied me throughout my childhood. The problem is, I think I truly imbibed that poem. Because I do not speak. Unless truly needed. Otherwise, I am quite content to listen.
Professionally, when I am with patients, yes, I know how to communicate. I can teach if the floor is entirely mine. I used to be a public speaker and was on the debate team in school as well.
But put me in a room full of professionals, perhaps in a multidisciplinary team meeting, and you would be hard-pressed to hear my voice. My instinct is to listen rather than take up conversational space.
Recently, my clinical supervisor brought this up during a supervision session. He said the next challenge I should take up was to find my voice in these meetings. I told him I would rather listen because I did not feel as though I had anything of import to contribute. In reply, he said I had always had something sensible to say whenever he shared his thoughts or clinical observations with me, and that he would prefer it if I could share those thoughts with the wider multidisciplinary team too.
The truth is, I do not mind not speaking. But perhaps in medicine, if you do not speak, silence can be interpreted differently. Perhaps you are thought to lack confidence. Perhaps people assume you do not know the answer. Perhaps silence can even be mistaken for uncertainty about your own clinical judgment.
More importantly, I am beginning to realize that speaking in medicine is not always about proving that you know something. Sometimes other people simply need to know what you are thinking.
An observation that remains inside my head cannot contribute to a discussion. A concern that I do not voice cannot change a decision. There may come a point in my career when remaining silent is no longer simply a personal preference, particularly as I become more senior and am expected not merely to participate in decisions, but to help make them.
And yet I am reluctant to abandon the lesson my mother left beneath the glass of my study table all those years ago. Because I still think the owl was wise.
Medicine, and psychiatry in particular, has taught me the value of listening. Patients sometimes tell us the most important things only after we have resisted the urge to fill a silence. There is value in observing before interpreting, and in hearing what others have to say before deciding what we ourselves think.
Perhaps, then, my mother was not wrong. And perhaps neither is my supervisor.
It has taken me almost three decades to notice something embarrassingly obvious about the poem I have carried with me since I was six. The wise old owl spoke less. He did not say nothing.
Perhaps wisdom was never in the silence itself, but in knowing when to listen and when something is important enough to be said. My owl can stay where he is. I may simply have to learn a new lesson from him.
Loshi Rajen is a psychiatrist in the United Kingdom.
