When to speak and when to be silent

So, I'm going through a thing. I've been reading a number of books and all of them are calling me in. Calling me to dig deeper and to exercise a new muscle. Maybe a better metaphor is a plant. I'm growing a little seed inside, which is just now breaking out of its shell -- sprouting into two leafs. The soil is full of nutrients which are nudging me into transformation. It has a lot to do with the hegemonic voice of my past, my family, and myself.

I find that I want to make this thing I'm going through about institutions, systems of patriarchy, domination and white supremacy. But that would be too easy and it would also avoid how this current seed is calling me to dig inside myself, not inside patriarchal institutions. As a white Euro-American raised with Western values, I've been grappling with this notion that liberation stems from a way of being that I'm still intimately engaging with. For example, my wife and I, in our queer marriage, are still rooting out heteronormative behaviors. In our interracial marriage we are still rooting out racist beliefs. And so as I explore myself as the subject from which liberation is seeking to heal, my perspective becomes one of being suspicious of myself. In other words, dig deeper.

And with this internal suspicion I'm thinking about a battle I come up against around learning when to speak up vs when to be silent. Often times I sit in this struggle: If I speak up, I’m taking up space in situations where my voice as a white person has been given too much credibility and too much space. Yet, if I remain silent, I’m silencing the voice of my self, intuition, and spirit. There's more to it, but that gets to the heart of it.

As I started thinking more about when to speak vs when to remain silent, it quickly got complicated and mixed up between "a good time to speak" vs "a good time to be silent" and "a bad time to speak " vs "a bad time to be silent." So I decided to sleuth it out side by side. First I looked at the problematic parts of me which choose to speak out and choose to be silent, and then I looked at the beneficial parts of me which choose to speak out and choose to be silent. Here they are:

The problematic side:

• If I speak up, I ignore uncomfortable truths. If I remain silent, I remain inside my own formation of beliefs.

• If I speak up, I ignore the voices of others, If I remain silent I live with doubt.

• If I speak up, I pathologize the perception of others. If I remain silent, I maintain this is the work of others.

• If I speak up, I exert dominance. If I remain silent, I live with unanswered questions.

• If I speak up, I am arrogant. If I remain silent, I hide behind insecurity.

• If I speak up, I ignore the voices of others. If I remain silent I can use ignorance as self-defense.

The beneficial side:

• If I speak up, I find healing. If I remain silent, I can be curious.

• If I speak up, I build community. If I remain silent, I build cognitive and intellectual strength.

• If I speak up, I encourage healing. If I remain silent, I learn domains of knowledge other than my own.

• If I speak up, I question myself. If I remain silent, I formulate questions.

• If I speak up, I share myself. If I remain silent, i can inhabit the perspective of others.

• If I speak up, I co-create new futures. If I remain silent, I learn to expand my nervous system.

• If I speak up, I bring unconscious myth into the fore. If I remain silent I learn to listen to my body.

I think there's a third piece. What does an honest and open dialogue look like when there’s a healthy balance of speaking up AND remaining silent?

• If I do both I speak with vulnerability and listen to be transformed

• If I do both I speak authentically and I listen to build community

• If I do both I speak for freedom and I listen to for connection

• If I do both I speak for connection and I listen for truth

• If I do both I breakdown hegemony

• If I do both I speak for action and I listen for generative struggle

• If I do both I am ready to move, build, engage, co-create