No Ordinary Silence

Pearl-handled silver sixguns hung from his waist in worn, studded holsters, tied down by leather strings around each leg of his dirt-stained chaps.  A wide-brimmed hat sat low on his head, creased and darkened from use, a beaded chinstring pulled up tight against the wind.  The fringe on his jacket fluttered, as the rider slid to a stop in front of the wide-eyed onlookers standing scattered at the edges of the makeshift corral.  He looked them each slowly up, then down.  Scanning, through steely, squinted eyes, for any sign - the slightest twitch of a brow - signaling fear...or guilt.  He was searching for the men who stampeded his cattle and stole his mules.  He would find them.  

But not today.  

Today, his mom was telling him to leave the guests alone and get to bed.  She was making coffee for the family friends who were smiling patronizingly in the living room, watching the extravaganza which encompassed most of the fireplace, and any furniture my six-year-old arms were able to wrestle into a circle to represent fences.

Forty-two years have passed since that performance, and I've grown to realize the after-show claps and cheers were likely disclosing the relief those people must've been feeling, that the sweaty kid with the cowboy boots and the endless imagination was finally done.  But back then, I didn't care.  I didn't want my best acting to be met with silence, and it wasn't.

I don't think I've outgrown that resistance to silence.  Not completely.  In fact, I think the avoidance of it is something we all practice, even at much more advanced ages.  Worse still, than putting our best efforts stagefront and having them met with criticism, is that they aren't met with anything at all.  And even when we hide in anonymity, refusing to risk the silence of the crowd, the fear of quiet follows us into the corners of our everyday lives.  We fill every moment with music, social media, television, sports - anything that can prevent us from finding ourselves alone with our thoughts.  

And that's the very thing keeping us from contentment.  We rarely invite the silence as an opportunity to look our thoughts directly in the eye.  We don't think deeply enough about what it is that motivates us, or where our gifts lie.  About how our gifts are truly about others - not ourselves;  our failure to use them is therefore an inherently selfish act.  We drown - rather than confront - our pasts, or that which we need to change about ourselves in the present.  Silence, for most of us, is when the doubt creeps in.  When we begin to fear the time has passed for us to change in any real way.   That we have made irreversible choices, which now define who we are.  

But despite the discomfort, it is important we face those things.  Take stock of them, and file them away without any more weight than they deserve:  Simple observations, that do not matter anymore.  They are woven into the fabric of the past...and have nothing at all to do with how we live the present.   

In the silence is where real ideas are born.  When we come to terms with our own imperfection, and choose to accept it.  When we reckon with our past, and resolve to take a few chances in the future.  When we decide we will live above our fear.  That we will use each minute and hour toward advancing that which, until now, we have kept suppressed.  When we decide it is better to make a disorganized attempt at something, and learn while doing it, than to never try it at all.

But trying requires a special kind of courage.  If we never try anything, we can continue to cling to an imagined hope, that someday, when we're ready, when our resources and time and skills are greater, we will do that thing we've always thought about, and it will be a resounding success.  We keep that hope tucked away as an 'out' from those times we experience dissatisfaction with our circumstances.  We fear that if we put a part of ourselves on display; if we try something, and are met with silence, we'll be forced to face a reality that could be less than we imagined.  And with the coming of that reality, the imagined one must go.

Even when we summon a fragment of courage to take a risk, we so often fall prey to the mistaken belief that everything needs to be perfect before we do it.  Would-be entrepreneurs, craftsmen, teachers, photographers, artists, writers or anyone else with ideas they want to communicate, can find themselves easily caught up in the frantic pursuit of perfection, thinking that what they produce should be flawless, before they release it to float before the masses, for anyone to see and judge.  

The objective truth is that people aren't worried about what we're doing nearly as much as we think they are.  Here's what will happen - especially at first - when you submit your ideas to the public:  Very few people will notice them.  Even fewer will care.

And that's entirely OK.

But if that is so, if by pursuing an idea we risk being ignored - people likely won't even immediately notice - why bother doing it at all?  Why not write thoughts down into a notebook, or paint a few landscapes, and slide them safely onto a shelf, where they can be quietly passed along to grandkids someday?  Why subject for scrutiny that from which we might never reap any real reward?  Logical questions, all, and I've asked them of myself more than once.  The answer always returns the same:

It is because your gifts were given to you for a purpose.  The use of them is your responsibility.  The outcome of using them is not.

Amidst the noise, we have bought the lie that striving to do things for which we possess real passion is a waste of time.  That there are more logical or important pursuits.  As a result, we have become people who follow guidelines established by the status quo.  We buy things which temporarily help us obscure the truth:  That we are simply following along with the sheep.  We are marching to a script dictated to us by peers or the media or advertisements - anyone who wants to sell us something that claims to satisfy our uneasiness, and feelings of yearning.  It is a lie that leads us far from the path of greatness, for which our gifts are intended.

 'Greatness' is a term used liberally, today.  By coaches, biographers and salesmen.  The definitions which appear in most dictionaries, and spring readily to mind, are those such as:  Notable, remarkable, outstanding.  Important, significant, consequential.  All reasonable, but all seeming to imply recognition and reward as the result.  They are only true of the subject in comparison with something else.  Which seems to me to be a sadly misguided way to view the gifts of ourselves and others.  Competition is fine.  Using it as a measure of your gifts is nonsense.

There is another definition, though, which I much prefer, and which suggests greatness as being about something other than yourself:  "Beyond the ordinary".  That's what we're really after, isn't it?  When we read motivating books, watch inspiring movies, slip away into our own daydreams, we want to be transported into a setting that isn't so ordinary.  

Though much of life is unavoidably mundane, (I'm working on a future article as to why that is not always a bad thing), I am convinced we need to reset our focus, so that larger parts of our lives are anything but ordinary.  There is room for all to pursue greatness by this definition, because none of the outcomes would be the same.  Comparison becomes pointless, and we should therefore never allow it as an excuse not to fully use our gifts.  

The reason we so often don't see things in such a way, is because the part of life that is interesting, that inspires and motivates and pushes us beyond the ordinary, is up to us.  It will not simply happen, and, even when we put forth the effort, it may not elicit the glamorous response we've wrongly assigned to greatness.  

Ignore the silence of the onlookers.  Some of the greatest acts in history occurred in obscurity.  They still changed the course of many lives.  Use the silence in your daily existence, to examine what a life well-lived looks like to you.  Don't give in to the temptation to fill every second with noise.

Greatness is found not in the roar of the crowd.  Not in the words of admiring followers.  Those are responses.  And responses are irrelevant.  Greatness does not depend on the lens through which it is viewed.  

You can't change your passions.  You are hardwired with certain gifts, and with the responsibility to use them.  Your greatness might be for another time - for a future generation.  For an audience who might not see your work in your lifetime.  It might only inspire others.  Others who will hear the roar, and feel the adulation.  But be encouraged in the certainty that the use of your gifts, should you choose to find them, is never, ever, in vain.

Unchanging, is the fact that in the absence of noise;  in the solitude, where courage is required to keep going: 

Greatness is found.  There, in the silence, where the decision is made to pursue it.