Day 213: The Signal Beneath the Noise

A meditation on purpose, stillness, and the truth beneath the performance of usefulness.

I remember once hearing a person say that they felt most alive in the quiet moments; when their phone was off, when their shoes were kicked off by the door, when nobody expected anything from them. They said this as though they were confessing to a sin. As though stillness was a strange pleasure they needed to justify.

I think about them often now. About how deeply we have been taught to mistrust silence.

We live in a world that mistakes noise for meaning. The person who speaks the fastest is assumed to know the most. The one with the most visible life must have the most important one. And those who are still, those who pause, are asked if something is wrong.

But purpose, I have come to learn, rarely arrives dressed for performance. It does not knock loudly or wear a microphone. It does not care for Instagram bios or five-year plans. It slips in during the spaces between things.

Like when you are doing the dishes. Or standing in the shower with the water too hot. Or waking up slowly on a day with no appointments.

That is where purpose lives. Not as a booming voice, but as a quiet pull. A small ache. A flicker of recognition. A feeling that says, “Pay attention to this.”

There is a scene in The Queen’s Gambit I return to often. Beth Harmon, the girl genius, finds chess not in a gifted program or a classroom full of praise, but in a basement. A janitor. A dusty board. A silence so complete it becomes holy. There is something deeply honest about that scene. It reminds me of the many people I grew up around; people who never used the word “purpose,” but who lived it daily. They did not wait to be told what mattered. They watched. They felt. They did. Quietly. With fierce tenderness. And I wonder: how many of us are waiting for purpose to arrive as a performance, when it has already visited us in the quietest rooms of our lives?

There is science, too, of course. If that helps you trust the silence. Researchers have found that the brain’s default mode network (re: the part that helps us imagine, remember, and reflect) only lights up when we are not focused on tasks. It is what allows us to piece together meaning. To tell ourselves the story of who we are.

But it shuts down when we are distracted.

We now check our phones over a hundred times a day. We are interrupted every few minutes. We scroll more than we sleep.And then we wonder why we can’t hear ourselves anymore.

Purpose, like memory, needs space. It needs breath. It needs pause. You cannot microwave meaning. You must simmer it slowly. And so I offer this, not as instruction, but as invitation:

Turn everything off. Just for five minutes. Sit somewhere without purpose. Ask yourself, gently: “What is trying to get through to me?” Don’t expect an answer; expect a sensation, a flutter behind your ribs, a warmth, a discomfort or a forgotten longing. That’s where it begins.

I will not pretend that silence is easy. Especially for those of us raised to earn our place in the world with performance. We were taught to measure our value by our output, our polish, our applause.

But you (and we) are not a machine. You (and we) are a story still unfolding. You (and we) do not owe the world constant clarity. You (and we) owe yourself stillness. The kind of stillness where your own voice has room to echo. The kind where something ancient and wise within you rises not to impress, but to guide.

And so I return to that person I once overheard. The one who confessed that silence made them feel alive. I wish I could find them now. I would say:“It is not strange. It is sacred. That quiet is your compass. Trust it.”

And thank you!

***

If something stirred while you read this, pause. Don’t rush to name it. Don’t rush to fix it. Just give it space.

Then share this post with someone who also needs to remember: Your purpose doesn’t have to shout to be real. Join us, all month, as we listen inward.

#LucivaraPurpose #LucivaraOfficial #LucivaraCourage #PurposeWithoutPerformance #TheTenetOfPurpose #TrustTheWhisper #CourageToListen #LucivaraVoices

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