2.10
You may believe that under the current situation that seems to be plaguing our lands that this title somehow relates to the undercurrent of unrest many of us feel. Nothing could be further from the truth.
There is definitely a time to break a silence and there is definitely a time to remain silent.
Too often emotion gets the better of judgment and we say thing we cannot take back. In the end, was it really worth it? Did the moral high ground we once stood upon give us comfort when we found ourselves alone on our mountain top.
Ruling a dead planet or one overrun with zealots who think as we do is not the path to happiness. It is the path of blindness. I cannot begin to tell you the number of times and ways where I wished I had said nothing no matter how impassioned I felt, it ultimately did more harm than good.
Again, this bares nothing on the nonsense of this world we who write or read this have any control over. It is about the control we have over ourselves. What we can and what we cannot do.
I took sometime in my life researching Eastern philosophies and rare is it ever that a contentious and emotional response garners a positive outcome. It is usually quite the opposite. I learn every day, sometimes the hardest way that the peaceful warrior is the one who conquers all.
A still and clear mind like the lake on a new morning reflects the sky and the clouds that move across it as does the sunlight that shines off glasslike visage. This too is how we should strive to think.
When your greatest concerns are what your enemies are doing and how to thwart them, you have essentially already lost. When the placid lake of your mind is turbulent and churning with the storms of emotion then navigation or even appreciation of the lake of life is lost.
You become one with your enemy for the chaos of their heart has now infected your ability to see. This is as much a daily struggle for myself as it is for many. Reactionary retaliation to the person who just threw a stone in my calm water has caused ripples of obscurity in my mind. I cannot force the water to calm, I must wait. While waiting, I am overcome with the desire to chase off the interloper jumping off my dock of serenity and into the shore.
As I land in the water, there is now more disturbance. I can no longer see the lake, I am now focused on the perpetrator who stole my serenity rather than calmly going back to the placid moment and waiting for balance to return.
So the price of silence is willpower. The cost of success is patience. The victory is not in defeating your enemy but understanding them and finding a way to peace with them. Else your world will forever be a maelstrom of discord.
I know well, most of my life has been the rapids, not even a lake.