Turn Your You Switch Off

"The quieter you become, the more you can hear." - Ram Dass

Dass states the obvious. If you’re inherently loud and obnoxious like I can be at times your initial reaction to this quote was probably: “No, duh,” and maybe you stopped reading. If you aren’t actively creating noise than the clamor around you decreases exponentially, thus allowing you to hear things you couldn’t possibly hear while listening to the sound of your own voice. With this interpretation of the quote, you should become quiet in order to hear what others have to say. This was the route I took when I used this quote last year. Excellent advice and admittedly part of what Dass was getting at, but I don’t think it really captures his entire message.

On Thursday I punched two of the obligatory volunteer hours and kept score at the JV and Varsity volleyball games at our school. It’s not a social job. You have one friend in the entire world, the person running the book, and he or she has so many details to keep track of (not to mention usually not having a clue about the game of volleyball) to even think of mumbling more than a hello. So I had a lot of time to observe. Among other things, I noticed Ms. Kotiw (pronounced Kotiv) at the game. She’s a new middle school teacher at our school, and I don’t have her so I don’t really know anything about her, but I saw her sitting at the game. She doesn’t have any children at our school, so the only valid explanations I can come up with for her being there are the extremely unlikely circumstance that she had a child on the opposing team or the far likelier event that she just wanted to check out a volleyball game at our school and hang out with the world.

Soon after she sat down, an eighth-grade student of hers sat down next to her, we’ll call him Robert. Robert is the kind of student that that walks into the classroom with a boombox (or whatever the modern equivalent is) blaring rap so dirty that the clean version is just an instrumental; the kind of kid that gets a standing ovation when he turns in a homework assignment and that no one wants to get in a fight with. And Robert sits down next to Ms. Kotiw and they talk. He’s not in trouble, she didn’t even prompt it. For thirty entire minutes, he’s not a thug and she’s not a teacher, they’re just two people hanging out a volleyball game who, despite enormous differences, want to talk and have a good time. How cool is that?

Friday afternoon I sat outside in the chilly weather to work on day 61 of the “Bible in 90 Days” challenge and saw what I would have considered a snobby, popular girl riding through our neighborhood with her kid brother. Friday night, homecoming weekend, and the popular girl on a bike ride with her little bro. How cool is that?

Two really simple things that made me smile, that taught me about the character of people that I thought I knew and all because I took a moment to “become quiet.” In another mood, I might be busy cracking jokes and being the center of attention and totally have missed those beautiful little things that are happening all the time around us.

There’s a lot of noise in our world, and in addition to that, as human beings, we love to hear the sound of our own voice, our own life, our own agenda, it roars over everything that goes on in the world. Our prerogatives, our time, what we want. If you want the truth of the matter, that is exactly what’s wrong with our world. Pride and selfishness and let me tell you it roars. Good state of mind and the good vibes, the happiness roars and we celebrate. Bad times and we whine and complain. Can we forget about the temporary moods for a bit and just shut ourselves off? Turn the volume off of us and look around.

The problem with become meopic and myopic is that meopic and myopic people often miss the wonders of the little beautiful things going around them. It’s easy to do because the world shouts the bad at us and we are trained to see the worst in people. I’m realizing as I observe people that there are some cool things in everyone. I don’t want to say that “most people are good,” because as a Christian I believe that nobody is good except the father, but that’s kind of the idea I’m getting at. There’s “good” all around us and if we are too focused on the little things, ourselves and our friends we are missing a lot of beauty and beyond the beauty valuable knowledge about people. If you had told me that about Robert or even Mrs. Kotiw I would never have believed it.

It’s not always bad things that distract us. We want to do well at our jobs, we want to be the best people that we can be, we want to make a difference in the world, we want to be liked, to have friends, live the American dream -- all good things. But don’t ever get so focused on all these good things that you forget to look around at this world. We’re trained to believe it’s all bad, and it is in a lot of ways, but you miss out on a different kind of education and a different kind of beauty when your agenda, albeit wonderful, takes on your life. Turn yourself off.