I’m practicing the art of silence today as an exercise to surrender my ego. Instead of speaking, or engaging, and defending my impassioned rightness while tearing you down because of what I perceive as your wrongness, I am choosing silence. The noise is encroaching and I find myself annoyed, overwhelmed, brokenhearted, and angry. We all have a lot to say, don’t we? Our uninformed opinions about everything from the weather, to politics, to religion, to vaccines and viruses, to policing, to what it means to be this or that…. Really, we appear to have surrendered to the ego maniac that lives within, as we fulfill a desperate need to spew out nonsense. I know, this seems a bit negative. Maybe a lot negative. And please, don’t think I am calling any one person out- we are ALL guilty of this. We are all ignorant and uninformed about a LOT of things. It is simply not possible to know it all. Our ego, the part of ourselves that needs to be right, in the thick of it, in the spotlight, often needs to be checked so that we can exhibit humility instead. How we communicate and how we experience communication is tied up into our ego. Sometimes, we need to let the ego go, practice humility and instead of speaking our “truth” we may want to think about practicing silence instead.
In my silence, I can’t help but wonder at misplaced empathy and the danger that can cause. This is the age of empathy if you haven’t noticed. We find ourselves practically falling all over ourselves in an effort to out- empathize one another. At least, this is how it looks. Our need to be right, to be righteously empathetic to every cause, every movement, every perceived injustice, well, it certainly feels disingenuous. Our ego tells us that we know exactly what is right and wrong and to hell with you if you disagree. Our ego feeds this idea that your truth is THE truth. And we speak. We scream. We put our fists into the air in support of causes, and against others, about which we know NOTHING. We post- Lord do we post. Post after post, we unleash a stream of ego driven drivel onto an equally ego driven audience and we congratulate one another over our brilliance or viciously castigate those who don’t understand or disagree.
I wish we didn’t have social media. I really do. It is almost impossible to be silent, to surrender to silence, and to surrender our egos in the era of social media. Our ways of communicating have exacerbated the very worst conditions of our humanity. We have gotten louder and more full of ourselves and it’s become so toxic. We have become so toxic…. and this i know because I used to do it myself! But I realized a sobering truth- I’m not always right and more than that, my ability to communicate my thoughts, right or wrong, left a lot to be desired. I became toxic. Time to practice silence and surrender the ego.
The fact is you aren’t always right. You don’t know everything. Acknowledging that, REALLY embracing that fact is one of the hardest things I have ever done, and releasing my ego, by practicing silence, was one of the best things I ever could have done and so I will continue to do it. It is so worth it to overcome this self indulgent need so many of us have to cling to the sound of our own voices, our pride in these silly Facebook posts, our “right” to be heard, our “right” to say whatever it is we want regardless of whether we are right or wrong, whether we bring people together or tear them apart, whether it is truly for the greater good or not.
Let’s just be silent for a while. Contemplate. Pray. Meditate. Let’s take the time, during our silence, to release the worst part of our egos. Let’s find out what motivates us, what hurt us so bad, what made us so angry, and why. What is the motivation behind our “empathy.” Could it be that it isn’t true empathy or even sympathy but something far more sinister? Take the time in your silence to self reflect, to dive deep. As we release the ego and articulate our meanings and motives in the silence, embrace humility, we can determine whether it is responsible for us to speak. Can we do so in a way that has true meaning and isn’t divisive drivel that really only makes everything worse? Use the silence to really figure out if you have become part of the problem or part of the solution.
This isn’t easy. For some, it may be impossible. I know how hard it has been for me to release my ego and it’s something I have to continually do. I know it is almost impossible for me to surrender to silence because all I know is how to fight even when the fight isn’t mine. Today, though, I have practiced both. I had to. If I hadn’t, if I don’t continue to, I would have likely further complicated a couple of already very complicated situations. I think I’m right…. maybe I am. My ego is telling me so. But am I? And if I am right, isn’t even more important to articulate that message well, and to communicate my message in such a way that the person who receives it actually hears it and takes it in the way it was intended? So that it’s constructive and helpful? My point is, sometimes, it’s better to be silent- especially if you find yourself incapable of communicating in a way that is humbling for you and in a way that makes those that encounter your words, thoughts, and posts better for it.
Thanks for stopping by. The world is a shitty place and we are the only hope it has. Let’s do it justice.