{"id":2460,"date":"2011-06-15T00:13:23","date_gmt":"2011-06-15T07:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/?p=2460"},"modified":"2011-06-15T00:13:23","modified_gmt":"2011-06-15T07:13:23","slug":"silent-wednesday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/silent-wednesday\/","title":{"rendered":"Silent Wednesday"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When the grocery cart caught the back of my heel, I didn\u2019t say anything. And when the lady said, \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u201d in a tone that voided her words, I held my tongue. She was being sarcastic, paying me back for cutting in line. I didn\u2019t think I had, but I also didn\u2019t argue my innocence. I couldn\u2019t. It was a Wednesday.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t talk on Wednesdays.<\/p>\n

Six weeks ago, I took a vow of silence. Just one day a week, but for fifty-two in a row. I had the idea over a year ago, but I didn\u2019t commit to it then. It seemed so utterly monk-ish, too strange and cerebral.<\/p>\n

I also thought I couldn\u2019t handle it. And back then, I might not have had the discipline. But for quite some time, I\u2019ve had the desire. Two desires, actually. The desire to think more before I speak, and the desire to speak less.<\/p>\n

It started three years ago when I\u2019d moved back to the States after living for two years in Germany. When I got back, for a few short weeks, I had to think before I spoke. My English had gotten that rusty. Not only was I not used to forming sentences in my mother tongue, I also wasn\u2019t used to being around native speakers and how darn fast we talk. So for that precious spell, my mouth had jet lag. There was an actual pause \u2013 call it a space for thought \u2013 between the time the other person\u2019s sentence ended and mine began. It was a new thing; that hitch in my timing.<\/p>\n

I was amazed at how much I filtered out. The best part was, what got left behind were usually rude remarks. While my jet-lagged mouth took its minute to sort things through, my mind had a chance to speak up. More than a few times, it told me, \u201cDon\u2019t say that. It\u2019ll hurt feelings.\u201d The other amazing part was, I listened. I quit flinging out zingers, trading barbs, one-upping cut downs. In short, I was nicer<\/em> than normal. If I had a graph, I could demonstrate how the level of my sarcasm dropped fifty-seven points to an all-time low during that enchanted jet-lag phase.<\/p>\n

Then it went away.<\/p>\n

I probably wouldn\u2019t have given my appetite for talk another thought, if I hadn\u2019t gone to visit my grandmother last summer before she died. At ninety-seven, she held her own during most of my surprise visit. She did have a little trouble keeping track of who I was, but I didn\u2019t mind. Actually, one of my favorite chats with her, the one that changed me, happened when she took me to be my sister.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d wheeled her out on a patio, away from her moaning roommate and into fresh air. While we watched birds and butterflies behind a pink hibiscus, she took my hand and held it. Eyes on the blue sky, she said, \u201cI hope your mother is enjoying LuLu\u2019s visit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure she is,\u201d I said, following her misdirection, willing to play my sister for a minute.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat girl,\u201d my grandmother said to me about me, \u201cthat girl is a chatter <\/em>box.\u201d (Note how, even in her weakened state, she managed such emphasis on the chatter<\/em> bit.)<\/p>\n

\u201cShe sure is!\u201d I shouted and laughed.<\/p>\n

Truth be told, I may have laughed, but my feelings were hurt. No one likes to hear something negative about themselves. It doesn\u2019t matter if it\u2019s true, or if it\u2019s said by a ninety-seven year old woman wheeling up death\u2019s door ramp. None of that makes a painful truth less painful, or less true. My grandmother was right. I am<\/em> a chatter box, a glutton for talk.<\/p>\n

Lately it\u2019s occurred to me that it might be a nervous habit. Dead air makes me itchy. Other times I think it\u2019s because I\u2019m a girl born and raised in the South. Somewhere during my formative years, someone wrote into my Book of Rules that it\u2019s a girl\u2019s job to keep the talk-ball rolling. Guys sit and listen. Maybe they don\u2019t always listen, but they do sit. At least for me, that\u2019s usually how it is.<\/p>\n

Gary Chapman writes about this phenomenon in his book, The Five Love Languages,<\/em> when he describes Babblers and Dead Seas. Babblers talk, Dead Seas listen, and the two types usually hook up. Chapman explains that Dead Seas keep everything in; they\u2019re fine not<\/em> talking. On the other hand, Babblers feel compelled to yack about every vague and fleeting impression gained through their senses. As Chapman puts it, Babblers \u201chave no reservoir.\u201d Reading that phrase in the book was like looking in a mirror. I\u2019m a Babbler. I have no reservoir.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s part of what my Silent Wednesday vow is about. It\u2019s about digging a space inside myself to hold thoughts and words that don\u2019t need to come rushing out. Each Silent Wednesday is my time to deepen myself, in the reservoir way, and in others.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s only been six weeks, but my word-diet is already working. I find I listen better, even if it\u2019s Thursday. I\u2019m quicker to catch myself in the middle of my running on. And I\u2019m less verbally impulsive.<\/p>\n

Just ask that lady in the grocery store. After crashing her cart into my heel, she got no snide comment out of me. And while she stood there ready to spar, I walked away, silently creating space in my reservoir.<\/p>\n

Lu Lu Johnston Bio:<\/h3>\n

“When not watching what she says, LuLu Johnson lives freely in Rabun County, Georgia. Before that she lived in Berlin, Atlanta, Orlando, and San Antonio. She earned her MFA in Poetry from Georgia State University, and she has undergraduate degrees in English and art history. Her poems have been published in Prairie Schooner, Flyway, <\/em>and Atlanta Review<\/em>\u00a0under her given name, Heather Leigh. She won the 2007 Study Abroad Prize in Nonfiction awarded by the University of New Orleans, and the essay was published in The Pinch<\/em>. She has attended many writers’ conferences including a stay at the Norman Mailer Writers Colony, Bread Loaf, and Sandhills where she won first place in fiction. She writes art reviews for The Clayton Tribune,<\/em> and she\u00a0operates Scratch Paper Press, a company that produces and sells books on local attractions and businesses of interest. Take a look at ScratchPaperPress.com. She kept her vow of Silent Wednesday for two and a half years, and she’s looking forward to taking it up again, once life quiets down a bit.”<\/p>\n

Back to <\/strong>Stories<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the grocery cart caught the back of my heel, I didn\u2019t say anything. And when the lady said, \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u201d in a tone that voided her words, I held my tongue. She was being sarcastic, paying me back for cutting in line. I didn\u2019t think I had, but I also didn\u2019t argue my innocence. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,32],"tags":[118,134],"class_list":["post-2460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humour","category-self-improvement","tag-humour","tag-self-improvement"],"aioseo_notices":[],"views":4210,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}