Sitting here at the opening sentence, I am straining to recall something I had written around this time a year ago, in August of 2022. It was written for this project, and I am convinced that it was far better than anything I could come up with now in the present moment. Certainly, it captured everything I wanted to say, coming from a time of ideal inspiration in my life, the perfect opening for everything that I had hoped to come after it! But for the life of me, I cannot find it.
The words are completely lost to me. No amount of diligent searching has conjured up those thoughts. Wherever that work is, it’s gone, and I’m left with only the faintest memory of what I wrote. In any case, it was written a year ago, a voice from a different time and a different person.
So I must begin this from a completely new place, vulnerable and a bit apprehensive of how fresh it feels to start over. It’s a feeling that I’m not particularly keen on: and in a way, it’s a feeling that’s been following and teaching me over the last several years. Beginnings as ideas can seem beautiful to us until we actually have to experience them, and what we often feel in starting fresh is unfamiliar. We have no reference point. We could move in any direction, and that can be scary because how do we choose? What tells us to go here rather than there? Our experience becomes very spacious, and that space can feel disorienting.
Equally daunting is the thought that a first step could be the wrong one. I sincerely hope to share something in writing that, even in a small way, might be helpful, but I can’t guarantee that. One sentence unclear, one word placed awkwardly, and poof: cursor to the x, click, the reader is gone. On to the next thing.
That kind of worry might sound unnecessary, but it comes from a reverence for words and a desire to use them well. What we say reflects who we are, and as the Arabic poets say, speak only if your words are more beautiful than your silence. Silence, embodied by the space of listening, is where I’ve found myself over the last several years. It is the place I emerge from now. I’m not sure if I’ve measured up to the Arabic poets, but I’m conscious of how my words are rooted in that silent place.
This turn to listening began at the onset of the pandemic, March of 2020. At the time, my life survived on words: my work and aspirations necessitated constant speaking, writing, and doing both with purpose. They were my tools, allowing me to create a life that felt both meaningful and valid. The change brought on by the pandemic abruptly ended all of that. To me at least, that ending felt as sharp and precise as a surgical incision. First everything, and then nothing. Reality, at least in the way we expected it, was completely altered. In its place, we found ourselves staring at a Beginning that was fully uncertain and unknown.
What I noticed almost immediately in those first days, weeks and months was a flood of noise instead of a pause. In a time in which we could have become still and careful in observation, we filled that space up as soon as it emerged. We saw spaciousness, something bigger than ourselves, and we couldn’t bear it. We had to fill that gap all the way to its edges with explanations, arguments, stories of all kinds.
Those stories became part of a deafening chorus. It couldn’t just be a pandemic, which is bad enough: it’s a conspiracy. A hoax. An anomaly. A divine signal, marking the end of the world. Not anything to worry about. Everything to worry about.
Those stories stuck with us, and as the years went by they became longer, more detailed, ensuring that the gap the pandemic opened would stay hidden behind our elaborations. The effects of intense change, the grief of loss, the difficult, open-ended questions that only a disaster like that could introduce, went determinedly unnoticed. For the most part, we shouted out those realities and set about trying to move on, perhaps not even knowing what we were trying to move on from. This was all quite natural, I think. That time in our collective life was a mirror, and if there’s one thing we as humans struggle with, it’s reflection. Instead of looking into the mirror, we tried to cover it up so we didn’t have to see what was reflecting back.
Those stories became part of other narratives as the foundations of our global life were shaken, as we began to see our reflection whether we liked it or not. We at once came into a time of critical questioning and enthusiastic denial, each of us vying to be certain in ways that we hoped could anchor us in a sense of security. When the world seems to be changing so drastically, sometimes it feels best to declare your island and retreat to the interior. In some ways, we have yet to emerge from that place where our arms are wrapped around our chest, eyes shifty and wary of threats from the outside.
For my part, I felt that my own voice would simply be speaking into the void. I certainly didn’t fully understand what was going on-what good would it do to start trying to explain it myself? Many hurts long overlooked were beginning to express themselves: who was I to claim knowledge of these things? I was amazed at the surge of commentary that emerged before we even had a proper sense of what was shifting-and I sensed the potential to miss the deeper conversation, the communication coming from the space opened up by the pandemic and its consequences.
In light of this, I gave up my words for silence, not out of resignation but in a desire to listen, as best I could, to how we were changing and what that change would bring. I was curious about what was in that gap, and what it showed us about ourselves. As the world filled with experts, I realized I needed to become a student. Only by listening carefully would I be able to make out the underlying questions that were disguised behind assumed answers.
Years have gone by since then, and it feels important now to begin voicing what I’ve observed. I’ve learned that much of what’s worth saying in life only comes through listening first: and much of what we say usually has nothing to do with listening. We have a habit of consuming and then reacting, which is the absence of thought and does not involve us very much. In that cycle, we learn very little about ourselves, or the world, and and lose our opportunity for connection.
Our world today is drowning in disconnect, and we are trying to re-ignite that sense of connection without having learned the things taught to us by such challenging times. In other words, we haven’t fully experienced that gap, or acknowledged the difficulties involved in trying to start over. The world begs for a genuine beginning, a renewal unimagined. That kind of call doesn’t come very often, and we will fail to answer it if we insist on remaining withdrawn from life, safe in our own caves. We can sit in them as long as we like, but the asking of sunrise, the emergence of light, will go on ignored. No connections can be made by fumbling around in the dark.
This writing is, in a way, making sure I stay out of my own cave. Even listening can get too comfortable: if you’re not careful, you can become an armchair observer, present but not participant. In turn, I have also seen light emerging despite the deep confusion and upheaval of our time. There are people who have been experiencing the gap, who are listening to this call for renewal. There are others still whose words were offered before now, whose truth is ripening for the situations we find ourselves in today. It seems now, more than ever, we need the examples of such people and be reminded of what it means to live in search of light.
