After the Noise
Well, well…I’ve begun a new something: I’m taking a break. Time off. Rest. I can hardly believe it but it’s true. Already I can feel it in my body, my mind and my soul. I can see it in my moods. I’ve heard myself giggle over a silly, distant memory.
Five years of constantly escalating stress have been painful. For five years, he-who-shall-not-be-named made my blood pressure soar as I visited one desperate day after another. Then came the pandemic with its cost paid in lonesomeness body bags. Watching President Biden and Vice President Harris at their inaugural I realized that I was holding my breath, still waiting to see “what’s next?”
I’ve decided to stop waiting and start living again. What I need first is a long, deep breath, the glorious sense that I’m not carrying the weight of the world. Goodbye anxiety; farewell, stress.
I do this with apologies since my friend Robert Hubbell has urged all of us “to work harder, smarter, and with more discipline than the GOP-QAnon-Insurrection Party.” I’m sure he’s right. We need to bear down harder than ever. But before I do that, I’m going to take a brief interlude to replace some fury with some naps. I’m going to rest.
We’ve earned this. We’ve won, not eternally and not perfectly but, c’mon folks, we took the White House and Georgia (Georgia!) gave us two Democratic Senators for a 50/50 Senate with a woman-of-color Vice President to break our ties. It’s good to win, and good to exhale.
Besides, in the words of our President, there are “enough of us.” Ian Millhiser pointed out that “states like Wyoming receive the same number of senators as large blue states like California, even though California has 68 times as many people as Wyoming. …In total, the bloc of senators who voted to convict Trump represents 76,704,798 more people than the bloc that voted ‘not guilty.’” As I said, there are enough of us!
Between the change in Administrations and some traction in fighting the virus with vaccines and national leadership, we can see in the distance the return of something like normalcy. The screaming noise that’s stuffed our airwaves and rattled our brains has diminished and, by choice, can be turned off. We can appreciate the sound of silence. We can imagine a future that knows less panic and more peace.
As the poet Rumi reminds us, “Listen to the silence. It has so much to say.” When I think of the blaring and often vile noise of hundreds of social media channels, plus the shattering of glass and decency on January 6th, I hear Rumi’s wisdom. All that noise is profane. We need to let it go.
So I’ve been working on calming myself; it takes some practice after all these years. But it’s possible. I can be still and know that I am safe. I can shut off the clattering commerce and listen to a sweet lullaby for my infant granddaughter.
If I can replace stress with serenity, so can you. We can both exhale, let our shoulders sag and our muscles relax. We can, and we should. We need to take the rest that we’ve earned. For this challenge, too, there really are enough of us.
