Rachel Feintzig is the Work & Life columnist for The Wall Street Journal. The WSJ bio blurb about Ms. Feintzig notes that she focuses, “on how to grow your career without sacrificing the rest of your life—or your sanity.” One of her recent articles does just that by focusing on the importance of quiet. I'm grateful someone on staff with a major news outlet cares and has the courage to write about this.
Quiet fascinates me. My interest waxed when reading Susan Cain’s book, Quiet, which came out about the same time as a scholarly psychology book subtitled, Psychological Explorations on the Quiet Ego. It remains a compelling topic these days as Lisa Graham McMinn and I have a book coming out in a few weeks titled An Invitation to Slow, with a chapter devoted to quiet. Being Quakers, we often think and talk about quiet, and (I hope) we practice it reasonably well.
I enjoyed Feintzig’s article, both the content and the writing, though I wondered who determined how to title her piece (usually it’s not the author). The title in the print version is, “To Get What You Want, Try the Art of Being Silent.”
The online version is a bit more brash: “To Get What You Want, Try Shutting Up.”
Titles are important. They help sell ideas (and news subscriptions). And maybe quiet does help us influence others, but I’m not particularly drawn to that reason for quiet.
Here are a few of my reasons for quiet, none of which are likely to sell many books or newspapers.
Kindness
Lisa and I were discussing the WSJ title when she suggested an alternative: “To Make the World Kinder, Try the Art of Being Silent.”
It’s a loud, loud world just now. We can be so harsh with one another. Did you know there is even a website providing people with “judgmental Facebook idiot GIFs”? One click meanness.
Quiet helps slow us down, count to ten, stay in our lane, remember civility.
While helping my daughter build a storage shed in her backyard a few years ago, the two of us needed to lug a 150-pound double door up some outdoor stairs. Two women out for a walk noticed us getting started and offered to help. Likely they have long since forgotten this simple act of kindness, but it shows up often in my quiet reflections about what goes right in the world. Simple acts can ripple outward for years.
Perspective
Dr. Paul McLaughlin, a friend and former student, ushered me into the psychological science of wisdom, culminating in a 2022 book together. Paul taught me that the words “perspective” and “wisdom” are sometimes used interchangeably by the social scientists who study this.
Does it seem that we’re constantly pushed to take a side? There’s even a board game now titled, I’m Right, You’re Wrong. One description reads, “Battle it out until one player is left standing, and FOREVER CORRECT!” (No, I didn’t add the caps).
Perspective backs us up a few steps, helps us see multiple vantage points, holds complexity and nuance and mystery.
The pathway to this sort of perspective is paved with quiet. Only when we sit still long enough, stop talking, and listen to others can we recognized the deep value of diverse views.
Sometimes you're right, and I'm wrong. Sometimes I'm wrong in all caps.
Conviction
Psychologists write about moral emotions, which help the world be a better place. Inward facing moral emotions, such as guilt, help us know when we’ve stepped in a harmful direction, feel conviction, and change our ways. Outward facing moral emotions, such as anger, help us confront the wrongs of the world.
There’s a place for both, but these days I’m more drawn to the quiet spaces of inward facing moral emotions. There are plenty of others spewing their anger from the mountaintops. That may be fine, or even good, but it’s not for me.
Most evenings I engage in an Ignatian exercise known as the Daily Examen, quietly pondering my day, reflecting on the ways I have lived and responded well and less-than-well. Conviction has become my friend and, I think, helped me live better than I lived before learning this spiritual practice.
Restoration
So much is broken in our world, as evidence by daily headlines about hurricanes and wars and crime. A quieter brokenness lurks beneath the headlines, evidenced in strained and severed relationships, shattered dreams, unfulfilled longings.
Quiet doesn’t take away the brokenness, but it helps calm our blaring alarm system. As a practicing psychologist, I see this every week. I can’t fix anyone, but I can sit with people quietly as they probe their pain, trauma, and woundedness. Oftentimes just being present, bearing witness, helps bring solace to deep sorrows and losses.
I think of those who have walked with me during the darkest seasons of life, not remembering their words as much as their presence.
Grace
One of Norman Rockwell’s most famous paintings is, Saying Grace, crafted for the 1951 Thanksgiving issue of The Saturday Evening Post.
Lisa and I refer to this painting in An Invitation to Slow:
If one looks closely at Rockwell’s Saying Grace, through the dim glass window where bold letters pronounce “RESTAURANT” in mirrored backwardness, a railway station stands. Rockwell effectively depicts the bustle of life in the café, and adding the busy, noisy movement of a railway station in the background syncopates the painting’s meaning—our longing for quiet spaces of grace in a world that moves too fast and is too loud. The caption beneath Rockwell’s Thanksgiving Post cover reads, “Our world is not the happiest place today.” The caption, like the painting, still fits seventy-plus years later. We still yearn for a quiet, slow grace to fill our senses and guide our paths through troubled times (p. 188).
I remain convinced that our greatest yearning in life is for grace. However difficult it is to define grace, it shows up regularly in the quiet spaces.
Love this! Thank you Mark.