Go Quiet

One of the truly stalwart members of Keep It Complicated is a dude named Tom.  I like Tom.  Tom is a little boring.  Tom is really a lot more boring than a little boring.  Tom is a good friend but he will never be a close friend because he's just too boring.  To me.  Tom is boring to me.  Maybe everyone else thinks he's riveting but I don't care what other people think.  When we were struggling to keep Keep It Complicated afloat post-pandemic and post-rupture Tom was one of the handful of members who came to the meeting almost every day.  Tom is an early riser so he would always arrive twenty minutes early, get the coffee brewing and the chairs set up, keep the secretary company, on the small chance that a new person would show up and want to talk.  Many a morning I'd show up ten minutes after Tom to find him and the secretary the only people in the room.  The fact that our attendance is healthy today is in no small part thanks to him.  When the meeting is over Tom books immediately while I try to hang around until there's no one else there.  

Recently we were in the kitchen cleaning up when he said he found it unusual that the woman who handles the three minute timer sometimes "forgets" to set the timer set when someone she likes is sharing but is always prompt when it's someone she doesn't care for.  Personally, this 80 year old woman is doing as thankless a task as you can do for the meeting and I think half the time she just fumbles a bit getting the clock reset and started again.  Tom, naturally, always blows through the three minute alarm, often blowing through the additional one minute reminder.  I didn't argue with him, pointing out his hypocrisy and the negligible possibility that he's right about the timer - I didn't see the point.  Believe whatever you want to believe, although I did find his comment sort of petty and oblivious - it's certainly more fun criticizing the behavior of others than analyzing mine.  My opinion of him changed not at all.  Everybody gets a pass on the occasional grouch and the occasional brainstorm.

A few hours later he called and apologized.  He had a few things going on in his real life that impinged on his ability to be understanding in the meeting.  I get it.  I thanked him and complimented him on his self-awareness.  I did NOT ask him why HE doesn't have to follow the rules while everyone ELSE does.  People aren't supposed to cross-talk in meetings, either, and I do that all the time.  We all have our foibles and we all slip on our spiritual journey and we all make mistakes from time to time.

I am really intolerant of people who talk too long in meetings.  I'm not referencing those incidents where a member is in a crisis or slogging through something particularly distressing but the ones where someone is giving a blow by blow account, "I did this, then he did that, then I said this . . . " that kind of crap.  Get to the fucking point is my attitude.  That being said I understand there are members who need this kind of detailed personal accounting.  I can imagine that when I share it might get too cerebral, too intellectual, too theoretical, too . . . well . . . pedantic . . . like I'm some kind of A.A. sage or seer, an individual who is way, way too impressed with what he is saying.

Even in quiet, I can be in a frenzy.  "Quiet desperation," Thoreau called it.  True silence for me comes from directing my thought to quiet places.  When I let my mind drift toward something that could go wrong - and let's face it anything can go wrong - then my peace is stolen and my creative capacity is a clogged toilet.  So . . . what's a catastrophizer to do?  Listen to waves and flowing water and birdsong and sussurring trees.

When in doubt - go quiet.