It's so nice to be here. So, let's get the silence（沉默） started. I was clearly testing you and I think you did great. And even if you thought that this was awkward（尴尬的）, I bet（打赌） that many of you during this silence（沉默）, you were able to notice some noises like some glasses around or some whispers（耳语） of a laughter. And I also bet that many of you in this silence became aware of an impulse（推动） to do something, a thought, an emotion, perhaps even a judgment about me and what was going on. And I hope that at least one or two of you took the time to appreciate the beautiful skirt that I'm wearing tonight.

  So, you see, we tend to define silence as an absence（没有） or a void（ 空隙）, but silence is neither a pure（纯粹的） absence（没有） nor a pure（纯粹的） void（ 空隙）. Silence is always coexisting（共存） with a little bit of noise or sound of movements or forms of language. For example, some years ago, I actually went inside of an anechoic chamber（会议室）. It looks a little bit like this in the picture and you can find those rooms in laboratories of acoustics（原声乐器） or physics at universities. And I was there for four eternal（永恒的） minutes and I was actually quite disturbed（打扰） because there was this very strong noise I felt as if a car was on its way to me. At some point, I thought I was hallucinating, but I wasn't.

  That sound was created by the gentle movement of my eyelashes（睫毛） touching the face mask（面具） that I had to wear to be inside. So this means that my silence in that room, our silence in this room, and silence pretty much everywhere else is redirecting our attention somewhere. And I have devoted（将…奉献） over a decade to purge（ 清洗） your silence（沉默）, to study silence, and what I want to do in this talk is to demystify（ 减少…的神秘性） what silence（沉默） is for you all. Because the more you know about what silence is and what silence is not, the more intentionally you will be able to use silence to nurture（养育） your relationships with others, with yourselves, with your surroundings. As a psychologist（心理学家）, I have studied silence（沉默） in many different forms. I go places and make observations（观察） about what happens when we are in silence（沉默）.

  I also let people talk to me about it, conversations, therapy（治疗） sessions（会议）, interviews. I write about my own experiences with silence and I also study what other people have written about it. I tend to say that studying silence has made me a story listener. And I want to try and experiment with you all. Are you ready? Yeah?

  Okay（好）. So I would like you all to quietly, of course, I want you to remember what has been the deepest form of silence that you have experienced lately（近来）. Picture that moment in your hearts, in your minds. Where were you? How did it feel to be there? If we all slow down enough, we all have plenty of stories to tell（ 告诉） about silence（沉默）.

  It could be a mountain hike, a meditation（冥想） retreat（撤退）, being by yourself on your sofa, slowing down as you drink your morning coffee. And of course, some of those stories will be more poetic（诗的） than others. I had once a parent telling me that the most realistic（现实的） place for them to find silence（沉默） is to hide themselves in the bathroom. It is all about those three or four extra minutes where they can take a breath before returning to the tactic（按顺序的） life with the toddlers（初学走路的孩子）. And I also had a patient telling me once that the bathroom is her to-go place when she's feeling anxious（焦虑的） or overwhelmed by interactions（相互作用） with her colleagues. Some of you might think that there's not a lot of poetry in bathrooms, fair enough.

  And that's not really my point. The point is that we all can embrace（拥抱） silence（沉默） wherever（无论在哪里） we are if we pay enough attention, if we have a good intention for it, okay? So, some years ago, I used to live here in Trondheim as I took my PhD in psychology（ 心理学） here. And back in the days, I also used to teach a course at NTNU. It was a course about silence and quality of life and teamwork. And I wanted my students to embrace silence from the inside out.

  So I basically（基本上） created a silent time. That means that every single morning at class, my students and I would spend half an hour in silence. Of course, you all know now that silence is not like a pure experience, so we were engaging（使从事于） with different tasks. It could be a poem about silence, a video about silence, a painting about silence, a meditation practice. And my students were journaling. They were keeping diaries about their experiences.

  So once the courses were over, some of those students would voluntarily donate those diaries for me to use them as research materials.