The Sound Of The Sea

Tom Jarvis lived in a modest flat above a bakery in Hove, the kind that always smelled like warm croissants and burnt toast. His life was a series of routines: up at 7:15, toast and tea, out the door by 8. He caught the same Number 1 bus into Brighton every weekday, where he worked a 9 to 5 job in admin at the council offices—filing forms, responding to emails, answering phones.

It wasn’t a bad life. Just… quiet in the wrong places.

The talking never stopped. Phones ringing. Meetings that could’ve been emails. Office gossip about who was dating who in HR. He found himself nodding along, speaking when expected, laughing on cue. But it all felt like noise. Words with no weight.

One Friday evening, Tom walked along the Brighton seafront as the wind picked up and the sky turned the colour of steel. He watched the waves crash in their endless rhythm, chaotic and calm all at once, and thought: What would happen if I stopped speaking altogether?

So he did.

Saturday morning, he wrote a note and pinned it to his jacket:

“I’m taking a break from speaking. Just trying something new. Thank you for your patience.”

It wasn’t dramatic or spiritual. It was just an experiment in stillness. A way to reclaim space from all the meaningless chatter.

The world didn’t fall apart.

At work, people were confused. His manager frowned, but Tom typed efficiently, nodded at meetings, communicated just enough to stay afloat. Some thought he was being eccentric. Others, rude. But over time, they adjusted. Most people were too busy to worry about someone else’s silence for long.

The surprising part was outside of work.

He began to listen. Not just hear—but listen. To the way the ocean changed its song with the tide. To the couple arguing in the park, and how love and frustration could live in the same sentence. To the busker near Churchill Square whose guitar said more than his lyrics ever did.

People spoke to him more, not less.

At his regular coffee shop on Gardner Street, the barista—Lena—started talking to fill the silence. She told him about her Polish grandmother, about her dream to start a gallery, about the people she imagined when she watched passersby through the café window.

Tom just smiled and wrote her notes. She started leaving doodles on his cups.

They grew close in the quiet. One evening, she handed him a napkin with the words:

“What’s it like, living without speaking?”

He wrote back:

“It’s not that I don’t want to speak. I just don’t want to waste it.”

She stared at the words for a long time, then said, “I get it.” And she really did.

Weeks passed. His silence stretched from something curious into something sacred. His thoughts felt clearer. His time felt like it belonged to him again.

On a late spring afternoon, sitting on a bench near the Palace Pier with Lena beside him, she leaned her head against his shoulder and whispered, “Whenever you’re ready to talk again… I hope I’m the first one you talk to.”

Tom didn’t say anything.

He didn’t need to. Not yet.

The waves kept rolling in. And for the first time in years, Tom felt like he was finally saying something—even with no words at all.