My aging body performs better and heals faster if I walk a good bit every day. In recent weeks, some of my walks have had a dual purpose—maintaining fitness and also helping support the democratic institutions on which our government is built. Last Saturday, I was one of millions who took to the streets as part of “No Kings” protests throughout the U.S. The atmosphere at the event I attended was festive. It made the roughly 2 mile walk go quickly and lessened any tiredness on a fairly hot day. I was careful to stay hydrated. I enjoyed looking at hand-made signs that were a big part of the event. Though I wished some people’s protest signs, banners, and inflatable figures less closely mirrored the disdainful rhetoric we often hear from our current national executive, I could identify with some of their justifiable anger. Some of the younger generations in my family work in government. They have been repeatedly buffeted and challenged by the sometimes haphazard, sometimes vengeful demands, firings, and shutdowns that seem to be prominent tools of this administration.
Earlier this month, I spent time alternately sitting silently in courtrooms and walking the halls of the U.S. federal courthouse nearest me, bearing mute witness to increasingly harsh, sometimes arbitrary processing and deportation of asylum seekers who show up for their asylum hearings. I have few illusions that either of my protest walks will influence policy in the short term. Still, putting my body where my convictions are in non-violent, non-threatening ways seems appropriate.
Because I arrived early for “No Kings,” I had time to meander among booths set up by various environmental and civic groups near the starting point of the march. I signed a petition or two. I noticed what especially galling aspects of government mismanagement or overreach were being most prominently disputed. One new-to-me civic proponent was one I almost missed. A single person staffed a small table with a tented sign, “The Listening Project.” I walked up to him and asked what he was doing.
“I’m trying to provide an example of good listening. Listening is really important,” he told me. “Many of us are not very good listeners, but practicing good listening can become a habit, like brushing your teeth every day. If you think of listening as a muscle, it’s one that gets stronger with practice. “
Given this implicit permission, I proceeded to talk about how frustrated I felt at the current political stand-offs in our country. It sometimes has seemed to me, I explained, that all this talk of “polarization” tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. He neither agreed or disagreed explicitly, but did note that he’d had chances to listen to people from all along the political spectrum. Sometimes, he observed, listening to people whose opinions might be quite militant to begin with resulted in their softening their stances as they felt heard. Listening can be powerful, he reiterated.
Most of us live in places and spaces that have gotten noisier over the years—airplane engines, traffic, sirens, leaf blowers, not to mention beeps and chirps from our electronics. It can be harder and harder even to hear each other, let alone listen. Too often, we compound the problem by ramping up our own noise output. So we need a third power, the power of quiet.
In researching this essay, I ran an internet search on “rising ambient noise levels in the U.S.” I found a website for an annual event that I hadn’t known existed, “International Noise Awareness Day.” (Its 31st iteration will occur on April 29, 2026.) I clicked on a link to an interview with author Chris Berdik about his recently published Clamor. The author had submitted his book proposal before the pandemic, but wound up doing much of his research and writing during pandemic-related shutdowns. Alongside its tragedies, the pandemic measurably lowered ambient noise levels in the world’s noisiest places. Berdik argues forcefully that noise is one of the stressors we have not yet paid enough attention to, that hearing loss is only part of the damage caused by too much noise too often.
To walk, to listen, to be quiet—three powers often overlooked. May we choose more often to walk together, to listen better to each other, and to find peace in quiet, both within and without.
Jinny's Occasional Poems 