Peace Be Still

I started asking myself a question a while ago: How do we effectively communicate important information in a world so loud that most of us can hardly hear our thoughts? How do we fight the noise to listen to what matters most? The lens of my question was an exploration of the delivery of news in an overcrowded echo chamber of words. I fear that even as so much valuable information exists, it's trapped in a carnival of noise—a carnival of our making. More the news executives yelled because the ad men wanted more space. After all, the companies wanted more customers because the banks wanted more cash. More! Around we go. We've "mored" our way into a wasteland of silos, fictional facts, and selfishness so deeply rooted that it will eventually end us all. How might I find the exit out of this carnival of the absurd? 

Whenever I get stuck in thoughts like these, I think of my grandmother, a wise and superstitious woman who carried a treasure trove of life lessons she shared generously with me.

Like so many from my generation, I was raised by a grandmother whose beliefs were tinged with superstition. Splitting a pole when you walked with her? Not allowed. She’d ensure we stayed on the same side, walking in unison. The pole symbolized unity; to split it was to invite division. As a kid, it felt like a silly game, and I'd happily skip around to the other side of the pole. And yet, here I am, a grown adult, still instinctively avoiding split poles—her tales ingrained in my very bones.

Her superstitions were woven through our household in a hundred small ways. For luck, you’d be served a spoonful of Black-eyed peas and greens on New Year’s Day. Want to buy a man you love a pair of shoes? Not unless you wanted him to walk out of your life (a lesson I still seem to forget). The list goes on, and much of it feels silly in our sophisticated world as we navigate educational systems and institutions that often make you question the knowledge of our elders, the lessons of natural order. More!

Then there was her storm ritual, one I’ve found myself returning to. You turn off the lights, TV, and radio and get still when a storm is brewing. I often think about the action behind getting still—a more active form of silence. As the thunderstorm began, my grandmother walked around the house, turning off electrical things, and she and I would gather in one room and sit in the stillness and havoc of the storm. I wondered what my grandmother was thinking about in those moments just sitting there, eyes closed in the quiet noise of the thunder. I now know that more than thinking she was listening. She was sifting through the noise to hear the lesson, discerning the difference between chaos and signal. I've had to sit in the stillness of a storm a time or two in my adult life. 

When I awoke on Wednesday, November the 6th, after catching up on the loud and insistent news of the day, the first thing that popped into my head was, "Get quiet and be still." I work in an industry that never quiets, not because silence isn't valuable but because noise is profitable. However, I couldn't ignore what I felt in my depths. It was time for stillness. Even as I write this essay, I am holding back so much of what I think about this moment because I don't believe everything I think needs to be said, particularly right now. My advice? Pick your words as if they have immediate implications. For now, I'm leaning into the lesson of those still times I shared with my grandmother. I am watching and waiting. 

Silence is not a lack of action. Most revolutionary action is planned in quiet places, starting with the internal quiet of listening, discerning truth from fiction, fortifying your moral and ethical stances, and gathering the courage and strength to press forward even when it feels like the wrong direction. Forward is the only way. Through the fire, we go. 

Be still.