Quiet

The value of not broadcasting your opinion

You don’t have to weigh in on everything. It’s ok to have an opinion and keep it to yourself. It is a good idea to consider and listen and learn, especially about topics where you have no personal experience, no learning, no research or study.

I recognize the irony of broadcasting my opinion about not broadcasting opinions. I write this newsletter, I have a podcast with Eugene S. Robinson, and I contribute to LinkedIn and other publications. I am fairly profligate with my opinions.

And yet. I try to write about things I know, either through personal experience or study or both. I listen to and prioritize the opinions of other people who have personal experience or study or both when it comes to situations I don’t know much about.

After George Floyd was murdered, there were lots of white people, especially white women, who broadcast their opinions on race. They would insert themselves into conversations between Black people with a strident demand for attention. These white women had opinions on race and extrapolated from their experiences with sexism to connect to the experience of Black people with racism.

It was pretty cringe-y.

I get it. I’ve been stirred up by injustice and wanted to signal that I thought something was bad. I wanted so desperately to be seen as an ally and not “one of them.” Whoever “them” might be at any moment.

I love a high horse, and have to watch my tendency to vault up on top of one at the slightest provocation. With my feet on the saddle, here’s my opinion.

• Posting on social media is not political action. Yes, people organize on social media for political causes, and that’s something different. But my posting on social media about a disaster is different than me donating to an aid organization that is bringing food and shelter to the people impacted by that disaster. One is about me. One is about others.

• My friends will stay my friends even if I don’t post about an issue that is important for them. If I lose a friendship because I stayed quiet about an issue I don’t fully understand then they weren’t really my friends in the first place.

• Pick your battles. We have limited time, energy and mental bandwidth each day. If you’re going to get immersed in a social media storm, what is it that you’re not doing? I’m always surprised when people say they have no time to do something, but they spend hours a day in front of a screen. I spend plenty of time in front of screens, but I’m not complaining that I don’t have time to go to the gym, or meditate or build my business.

I understand the buzz of rancor. There have been plenty of times I have mainlined self-righteous indignation. It’s active, energizing. I feel so virtuous. The world bisects neatly into right and wrong, good and bad. It’s tidy and easy to understand. Our side versus their side. Good people and bad people. Enlightened versus unenlightened.

No matter that very few things are that cut and dried. The patriarchy has trained us to expect binaries and impose them on any uncomfortable gray area.

White women have been silenced in many ways; at work, in opposite sex relationships, in educational settings. It makes us prickly about being told to be quiet, or having our opinions dismissed.  I get it. But some discussions are not for us. We’ve all seen the online conversations that are explicitly marked out as not for us where we chime in anyway with great umbrage about a conversation not being about us.

Where white women want to be heard and validated, white men want to be the authority. I recently had someone mansplain to me about how something was done. He’s done the thing for 2 years. I’ve done the thing for over 30 years. It’s almost reflexive – his need to dominate and educate, my rage at being mansplained at again.

Who gets to be centered? A friend of mine whose wife had cancer taught me something I often cite. When his wife got sick, he was taught about a series of concentric circles.

“The person in the middle of the circle is the one who has cancer,” he told me. “The next circle is the caregiver, which is me. Then there is the close family, work friends, neighbors.You are always turning to the person who is in the circle inside yours. That’s the priority.”

In other words, don’t expect the husband of the woman who has cancer to be comforting you, a work friend. If you need support, you can turn to a person in the same circle, or the one outside yours. You could talk to another work friend about your concern for your colleague with cancer.

That’s not invalidation, or not caring. It’s basic kindness, good manners, appropriate behavior. Perspective.

With whatever is happening, where are you in the concentric circles? Is what you are doing or writing or saying helping people in the other circles, both inside and outside of yours? Or are you vying for attention with the people in the center of the circle, those who really need the help and practical support?

People who want attention are voracious. Social media just ramps that thirst for attention higher and higher, because they have monetized it.

I’ve been the person in that center circle, and fought for air and resources from greedy monsters in the outer circles. Most of you have probably been there, or seen it happen. It’s horrible.

Try being quiet. Meditate. Take a walk. Take concrete political or social action that helps the people closer to the center in substantial ways – not with allyship, but with food and shelter and access to medical care.

It’s ok to make it not about you.