Silence Gives Us Resilience

If you ever have a moment where you step back after a difficult time, situation, day, whatever, sit with this version of Ma.

Ma: Between Sound is a contemplative podcast blending personal reflection, literature, philosophy, and cultural analysis. Each episode begins in conversation and is carefully rewritten, refined, and performed in Arya’s own voice.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Thank you for joining us today on another episode of Ma Between Sound. If you've never listened to this podcast, I just will give a quick synopsis of what Ma is. Ma is a Japanese philosophy and it describes the meaningful space between things. It's the silence between notes, between our thoughts. It's the stillness where our understanding begins. For today, I want to focus on something slightly different than what other episodes have discussed. There's a strange moment after we've gone through a difficult period, whether someone hurt us emotionally, or we've realized something difficult. And in in that moment, everything goes quiet. Maybe not at first. Maybe at first there's a lot of noise in our head, and then we sit down and we realize that whatever happened in that situation, we now have a strange moment where this quietness, it's not it's not external. It can't be. Sometimes we rush to smooth things over. I don't know if you've done that. I know I have so many times in my life. And then there becomes that moment of silence, and I realize maybe I forgave too quickly. Maybe I'm I did it because I want to stay useful. Because I always want to be kind. I always want to be needed. So sometimes our emotions only become audible when there is silence. And sometimes that silence actually tells us more than the interaction. It tells us more than the argument. It tells us more than the disappointment. You get to a point where you realize you're exhausted. And it's not because it's it's one moment, it's because resentment and anger they have roots. And those roots grow. And you realize that your generosity becomes an expectation to some people, and sometimes you give from emergency reserves for a long time that you don't have. It's given us, it's not empty. We're not avoiding, we're not trying to make excuses. We have finally given ourselves recognition. The pause where we stopped performing just long enough to understand the shape of our own heart, our own needs, and what that situation brought us to. And sometimes we cry, sometimes maybe we get a little angry, and then we sit back again and we start thinking more about what ourselves need. Only when we've sat down, we've lived in the silence, and we understand that our recognition is from the shape of our own heart. So I'd like to have everyone think about those moments in their lives where they sat down and they had that moment between sounds, and they took the time to let the silence become something that made them realize what they truly need. I'm not saying that we don't forgive, that we don't move forward. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, and what I'm asking everyone to try, is if you ever get in a situation like that, sit in the silence and allow yourself time to figure out what it is that you need, what it is that that scenario, that situation brought to you, and you can only do that if you allow yourself that silence. So maybe before you go into work for the day, before you get out of bed, or at the end of the day, when you've realized that something happened that made you feel uncomfortable or unhappy, or if there was a disagreement, sit in that silence. Don't feel uncomfortable. It takes time. So what I'm asking of you is allow yourself to learn how to sit in the silence, take the time, find what your heart needs. And the question that we leave ourselves in this situation, in this silence, in this ma is now that everything has completed what do I need? This podcast has been produced by Sentinel Studios.