The Gym No. 21: What just happened.
In the early hours of last Thursday morning, a memory shot out of its file in my mind so immediately and clearly that I got out of bed to begin this letter.
On September 11, 2001, I stopped into the tiny Starbucks store where I worked. I wasn’t working that day, just picking up a free coffee before going somewhere else, probably a college class.
This was in Denver and the store was open doing business as usual, except for the fact that the sound system—the one that blared compilations of classic jazz, low-key pop, alternative country, holiday favorites, or rogue employee-created mixtape for every other hour that the store was open—at least for the more than 4,000 hours that I worked there—was silent.
Our manager, E, who never broke a corporate rule, had brought in a portable radio from home, or maybe someone else did, but the radio was perched above the sink behind her, its antenna cocked and the dial tuned to NPR, as she worked the espresso bar during the morning rush.
No doubt some of our customers, and employees too, had been blamelessly oblivious, as you could be in those days before smartphones, until they came into the store that day. While I waited in line for my coffee and listened with the other customers to the grim reports floating over the din of the grinders and steam wands, I saw that one of our regulars, an expatriated New Yorker, coffee with two sugars, had a darkness over his face. Hundreds of miles from Ground Zero, in our single-story storefront, he saw all of our ignorance to scale. Do you know how many people died?! he yelled before shoving his body, bent in rage, through the glass exit door.
***
When this memory visited me on Thursday morning, I was in bed and awake, stewing, my thoughts pinballing around hurt and rage and grief and fear—for myself, for my colleagues and friends, for my children and their children—and ruminations on the day before. The corporate office where I work had also stayed open in the aftermath of a national crisis, but we had failed to turn off the sound system of business-as-usual, failed to broadcast the significance of having our government handed to a terrorist right over the heads of a capable woman. Instead, we resorted to private messages of significance in secret conversations.
Perhaps we thought that there was no need to broadcast anything because everyone already knew, having lost sleep watching the 24-hours news and looking at our smartphones. Perhaps we were deferring to others, thinking that a message should come from someone of a different position or rank. No doubt that during these divisive times, we were wary of making any sort of statement that might seem politically motivated or biased.
Whatever the conglomeration of reasons, what happened is that in the absence of a message of significance, the space for the message did not go away. As the hours ticked on, that space became filled with silence. Based on conversations I had, voiced and in and chats and text threads, that silence took on this meaning: We are not clear on what is important. It came to mean we are afraid to speak and that we may or may not be seeing what you’re seeing. It said what is making you, so many of you, tremble and cry and unable to eat or focus is not worthy of acknowledgement, here.
***
I need you to articulate your thoughts.
I need you to listen.
I need you to show me with your actions.
As a professional communicator, as a mom of young people who are still learning to be in the world, as a Gen-X woman whose male peers were taught that communication is for girls, as someone whose giving of fucks is falling away with her fertility hormones, these are the needs I find myself articulating on the daily.
Articulating your thoughts means taking the time to find the most precise words you can. It means when you are quiet, saying why. It means sometimes saying, I hear you and I don’t know what to say or we will not stop believing in our humanity or this is significant and hard and I am here with you, I am.
Listening means when you don’t understand, saying tell me more. It means processing others’ words but also their actions and trying to listen to their bodies and souls. It means accepting their trying with grace and saying sometimes I hear you, and I need space to process this, but I will come back to you, I will.
Showing with action means broadcasting the message even—maybe especially, in our fragmented times—when you think everyone already knows. It means putting the message on record. It means doubling down on commitments, and documenting those commitments in places that matter to people.
Some people might refer to what I’m asking for as “overcommunicating.” Fine, but more in itself doesn’t help; it’s got to be better: clear, focused, in plain language, padded in white space, with the background noise paused.
To anyone who might not know: The secret chats are furious. The office is just one environment they’re furious about—there’s so much more to analyze and say. We’re not off to a great start to face this challenging period, communication-wise. But we do know how to do better.
—Jonelle
