What She's Thinking: " "
Joy Pavelski
Issue date: 9/6/07 Section: Opinion
The girls down the street float to classes buoyed by overly attentive cell phones. My brother reads with music rattling his pages. The neighbor's dog apparently thinks that now is always the right time for barking. And, lately, I have been catching myself snapping iTunes alive immediately upon opening morning eyes.
Something is dreadfully wrong. Each of these is a small action which betrays deeper problems, a fault line shaking before eruption. Think I'm being melodramatic? Let's see why not.
It's fine to make a phone call while walking down the street, to listen to music while reading or to jazz your morning with melody. (The barking, however, could happily choke.) But these actions, when combined with each other and a myriad of nervous habits our culture seems to have collectively acquired, point to a national problem. We have forgotten the shaping of silence.
Our cult of accomplishment demands that grade-school children learn French, middle-schoolers attend camp for band, basketball and "leadership skills" (whatever those are), and high schoolers forget peace and sleep so they can earn ten more volunteer hours than the next Harvard applicant.
We only strengthen the frenzy through college and career. Get more experience! Broaden your horizons! Make a difference! As if the proof of men and women comes from what they do, not who they are. Because it's hard to measure a person's loyalty, wisdom or honesty, we instead try to measure their ambition, commitment, charisma. But would you rather have a roommate who knows all the right people or one who sets that aside to hold your hand
after your brother has died?
These things are not learned by joining another club or making valedictorian.
I wish I could create my own profound thoughts, but research as a noun, not a verb, is the step-stool and ceiling of an undergrad existence. So I will resort to something Dr. Sundahl said in class the other day: Silences and waiting make us think, "Will God answer?" Silence, then, is simple but difficult because it makes us think about things which we may not want to face.
This is why we avoid it with such persistence. It is easier to work like a madman than face the chaos your work-driven absence has created. It is more pleasant to look like you are arranging the social structure of the world while you chat furiously into your cell phone than to appear simple and alone as you walk beneath blowing trees. Silence is not forever, but we should not gasp away when it wends fingers about our waist and whispers into our hair. If you are always pretending you know the answer, silence can never make you wait to find it.
This is why I won't be listening to U2 or Jason Upton in the morning for a while.
Just to make sure I'm not afraid of silence.
Something is dreadfully wrong. Each of these is a small action which betrays deeper problems, a fault line shaking before eruption. Think I'm being melodramatic? Let's see why not.
It's fine to make a phone call while walking down the street, to listen to music while reading or to jazz your morning with melody. (The barking, however, could happily choke.) But these actions, when combined with each other and a myriad of nervous habits our culture seems to have collectively acquired, point to a national problem. We have forgotten the shaping of silence.
Our cult of accomplishment demands that grade-school children learn French, middle-schoolers attend camp for band, basketball and "leadership skills" (whatever those are), and high schoolers forget peace and sleep so they can earn ten more volunteer hours than the next Harvard applicant.
We only strengthen the frenzy through college and career. Get more experience! Broaden your horizons! Make a difference! As if the proof of men and women comes from what they do, not who they are. Because it's hard to measure a person's loyalty, wisdom or honesty, we instead try to measure their ambition, commitment, charisma. But would you rather have a roommate who knows all the right people or one who sets that aside to hold your hand
after your brother has died?
These things are not learned by joining another club or making valedictorian.
I wish I could create my own profound thoughts, but research as a noun, not a verb, is the step-stool and ceiling of an undergrad existence. So I will resort to something Dr. Sundahl said in class the other day: Silences and waiting make us think, "Will God answer?" Silence, then, is simple but difficult because it makes us think about things which we may not want to face.
This is why we avoid it with such persistence. It is easier to work like a madman than face the chaos your work-driven absence has created. It is more pleasant to look like you are arranging the social structure of the world while you chat furiously into your cell phone than to appear simple and alone as you walk beneath blowing trees. Silence is not forever, but we should not gasp away when it wends fingers about our waist and whispers into our hair. If you are always pretending you know the answer, silence can never make you wait to find it.
This is why I won't be listening to U2 or Jason Upton in the morning for a while.
Just to make sure I'm not afraid of silence.
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