What's Greater? Two Ears or One Mouth?
Untitled Photo By Kim Daniel is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
About this #MyDay Post
I'm currently researching myself. That is, I'm trying to learn more about my personality. Part of my journey has to lead me to read Quite The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain (2013) Random House, Inc. On page 199, she provides a quote from Mahatma Gandhi that struck a chord in me, given the current events over this week. From her book, Gandhi on his shyness:
I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. A thoughtless word hardly ever escaped my tongue or pen. Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. We find so many people impatient to talk. All this talking can hardly be said to be of any benefit to the world. It is so much a waste of time. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth.
With the killing of the Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and the ensuing predictions of an impending war, to the apologetic's posting on the Internet about how sorry they are of our Presidents actions, and to the retaliatory missile strike, the level of noise on the radio, TV, blog-sphere, etc. has become deafening. Throw in the fact that I'm about as introverted as they come, and I'm ready to bury my head in the sand to make the noise go away.
But, listening to Susan's insights on introverts and looking to what I recently learned from Ho'oponopono, I have an understanding that I do not have to bury my head in the sand, at least not literally. I have a secret to keep all the anxiety at bay resulting from these very prolific events and everyone's commentary. And I wish everyone else had the secret too.
The secret?
We have the power within us to turn it all off. When a tree falls in the forest, but you aren't there to hear it, did it fall? Well, yes. Yesterday it was standing, but today it's not. Even though you didn't listen to it, the fact remains it still fell. Because you didn't hear it fall, you didn't experience the anxiety with the death of a tree and the noise it caused in its last moments.
In the same way, you do not have to listen to all the people offering their opinions on the events. You don't have to hear the media make predictions of what will happen next. You don't have to suffer through all the noise. And, if everyone contributing to the noise would shut up and start listening twice as much before shouting into the Internet ether, maybe the truth will reveal itself in due time, and we can hear each other better.
Or to put it more succinctly, maybe we should all take a page out of Gandhi's thoughts on his shyness and restrain our thoughts, be silent and listen, perhaps we can then discern the truth.
As a postscript, the comment of two ears and a mouth came from the book also.