The Silence Is Screaming

If I’m honest, I have several negative associations with silence. In early childhood, silence was a punishment — an admonishment to be seen and not heard. On playgrounds, it was a weapon. Friends could become enemies with the power to render you invisible by pretending that they could not hear you. In romantic relationships, silence was rejection, a cold shoulder, and a punishment for somehow being disappointing.

And then I learned there could be an even worse silence. A silence of things left unsaid and promises broken. Silence heavy with grief and betrayal. Silence could break you — or at least, silence could break me.

I learned to hate it. I would fill the void with music, words, or a well-timed joke to lighten the mood. Or I could ignore it by going into my head — living in a rich fantasy world where the real one might have been silent but seemed so much more distant than the one in my mind.

Then, there was the silence of depression when everything inside my head didn’t screech to a stop. Rather, it slowly dissolved, leaving an endless expanse of emptiness and nothing — a silence worse than all the others.

I know my way around silence, but never before has it seemed to shout the way it’s doing now. This is something new — the silence of people who see the accident coming but refuse to speak out in warning. It’s the silence of complicity.

I cannot ignore this sort of silence, not now and never again.

Influencers I once followed for their educational or comedic content have been regularly posting about the genocide in Palestine and the total disregard of the Constitution from the current President of the United States. They have open eyes, and they use their platforms to spread awareness and action steps to create change. They don’t just keep posting as if it’s business as usual — because it’s not and never will be again if we don’t act.

I don’t understand the ability to disengage to that level. It feels like complicity because that’s what it is. I don’t want to know someone’s skincare routine if I don’t know that they’re willing to lose followers to speak out and say that genocide is always wrong no matter where or when it happens. I don’t want to read about someone’s relationship advice if they aren’t even bold enough to talk about current events that are having a profound impact on the world we live in right now.

I’m doing more than unfollowing accounts that post values in direct opposition to human rights. I’m also evaluating if the accounts I follow are using their platforms for anything worthwhile at all. Are they standing for anything other than self-promotion? Are they doing anything to make the world a better place?

Our actions either make things better or worse.

I tell my children this all the time. It’s usually one or the other. Are we contributing to a solution, or are we causing more of a problem? Usually, I say this when my children are fighting in the car, and one of them is making it so much worse by mocking or teasing the other. I’m trying to get them to see that we can make choices, and those choices can either help solve a problem or just add to it. And sometimes, a non-action can be a form of harm when that non-action contributes to an escalation of a situation.

In line waiting for a takeout order on a rainy day, I could have gotten irritated or lost my temper. Instead, I made conversation. I told the workers that I appreciated what they were doing. I didn’t add pressure to their day by attempting to hurry them along or complaining to management. I just accepted that my order might take a little longer than I had anticipated. I adjusted my expectations rather than letting myself get frustrated over something outside of my control. Happily, the others in line did the same. We chatted and joked about the wait and the weather without anyone being derisive or loud.

In a world with as many problems as ours, there’s always some stand we could be taking. We don’t have to take all of them, but we need to find something that we believe and stand behind. Otherwise, we’re just making the world worse than it has to be.

I attended a No Kings protest, and I had to choose what to put on my sign. I knew that I could advocate for national parks or trans rights. I could write about the environment or gay rights. I could simply point out that America isn’t a country for kings — not since the American Revolution fixed that. I had to narrow it down because my two hands could only hold up the one large sign. As a compromise, I made my sign double-sided for twice the messaging space. But I still had to make choices.

Which is why I can’t understand choosing to say nothing and pretending like everything is the way it’s always been. I don’t want to have conversations that ignore reality and pretend like we’re not facing fascism and an attempt at establishing an oligarchy. I don’t want to discuss the weather and relationships and never once touch on the fact that the daily news is filled with one outrageous and offensive story after another. I want to talk about the real things that are impacting real lives.

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The time to speak out is now — and always.

I don’t expect every creator, influencer, and individual to post day in and day out about the atrocities in the world. We all need our space to unwind and even enjoy the social aspect of social media. But I do expect that our true values should come to light somewhere and at some time when we’re posting about anything and everything else.

I am not the poster child for consistent activism. I go through times when I just want to post memes and pet pictures and talk about the stress-relieving benefits of my garden. But I also make time for what matters. I make room to let people know which side I’m on — because the sides are now drawn so starkly that it’s impossible to hang out in the middle. Refusing to choose a side is choosing one. It’s the harmful non-action I mentioned before.

Because it matters if we stay silent in the face of oppression.

Because it matters if we choose to speak out on behalf of the most vulnerable.

Because it matters how we choose to live in this short time that we have here.

And it matters if we can post reel after reel about our private dramas but can ignore cry after cry of a world in crisis.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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