There was a time when I felt the need to have something to say about everything.
Every trending topic, every heated discussion, every situation between friends, I had to give my take.
It made me feel like I was smart, like I was aware, like I had control.
But deep down, it was tiring.
It felt like I was always chasing something to react to, instead of understanding anything deeply.

The shift happened one evening when my close friend Riya called me.
She had just gone through a breakup and sounded completely lost.
She spoke fast, switching between anger and sadness, saying things that didn’t fully make sense.
The old me would have tried to fix it immediately.
I would have told her what to do, how to move on, what lesson she should take from it.
But that night, I didn’t.
I just listened.

She cried, paused, and then kept talking.
At one point she said, “I don’t even need advice. I just need someone to hear me.”
And that hit me hard.
Because it made me realize how often I spoke just to fill silence, not to help.
Sometimes people don’t need your opinion.
They need your quiet presence.

That moment stayed with me.
It made me think about how I behave online, in conversations, and even with myself.
I realized how uncomfortable I had become with silence.
When something happened in the world, I felt pressured to post, to react, to prove I was aware.
I was scared that if I didn’t have an opinion, it meant I didn’t care.
But that wasn’t true.

Not having an opinion is not indifference.
It’s honesty.
It’s the ability to say, “I don’t know enough yet.”
It’s giving yourself permission to learn before you speak.

I started applying that in small ways.
When someone sends me a controversial post and asks, “What do you think?” I now say, “I’m still trying to understand it.”
When friends argue about something, I don’t jump in just to add noise.
I listen.
And sometimes, I say nothing at all.

That silence feels strange at first, almost heavy.
But slowly, it starts to feel freeing.
It’s like taking off a mask you didn’t realize you were wearing.
You stop pretending to know everything.
You start noticing things you would have missed while trying to sound right.

The truth is, constant opinions exhaust the mind.
They keep you in a loop of judgment.
Every thought becomes a decision, good or bad, agree or disagree, like or dislike.
But the world is rarely that simple.
There’s so much in between those choices that you only see when you stop rushing to decide.

Now, when I talk to people, I try to listen without preparing my response.
I try to let their words sit for a moment.
I try to understand what they’re actually feeling instead of jumping to what I think about it.
And that’s when real conversations happen.
That’s when you realize silence isn’t emptiness. It’s space; space for empathy, space for understanding, space for truth.

Riya once told me later, “That night when you didn’t say much, it actually helped the most.”
That stayed with me.
It reminded me that sometimes the most powerful thing you can offer someone isn’t an answer.
It’s peace.

We live in a world that measures intelligence by how fast you respond.
But maybe wisdom lives in the pause.
In the quiet moment where you choose not to react, but to observe.

You don’t need an opinion about everything.
You need perspective, patience, and presence.
And sometimes, silence says exactly what words never could.