The Portside Pen

Silencing the committee

By Michael Kirshtein

Michael Kirshtein and his late golden, Hank, along the dunes at Sullivan’s Island during the “golden hour.” 

There was this guy I met in 1989. We’ll call him Skipper. My dad hired him at our King Street furniture store six months before I joined the family business. Over the years, he went from employee to sales manager to general manager. He settled into that rare space somewhere between closest friend and brother.

Skipper had a committee.

That’s what he called the voices in his head that seldom seemed to adjourn. Restful sleep was a rare luxury. I soon realized Skipper wasn’t alone. I’ve got one. You probably do too.

There’s something exhausting about lying awake at night and conducting an autopsy on the day you just lived.

Mine prefers conversations that have already happened or may never happen, and problems that don’t actually exist yet. It’s remarkably well attended for a group I’ve never once invited.

Many nights are spent trying to silence the committee into nothing.

Lately, I’ve been wondering if that’s the right idea but the wrong objective.

Maybe silence isn’t nothing.

There’s an ancient Japanese concept called ma. Now, before you go fitting me for a tweed jacket and a pipe, I should confess that I tripped over it by accident while reading something considerably less scholarly.

Ma is the space between things. But not empty space. It’s the part we’re tempted to call nothing until we notice what it does. The pause that gives meaning to what comes before and after it.

Musicians understand this. A rest is part of the composition. Ask Simon and Garfunkel. They did pretty well with the sound of silence. Writers too. White space on a page can speak volumes. Even the humble little comma says, stop, if only for a moment.

Perhaps that’s what silence is supposed to be.

Not emptiness.

Room.

I had another dear friend. We’ll call him Hank.

Hank was big and beautiful. Spent 15 years mastering something I’m still trying to learn. Never worried about what had happened or what might happen. Or anything, for that matter.

He showed up to work with me at Dixie, settling in as naturally as Skipper did on the sales floor. Didn’t require much. Not noise. Not approval. Mostly, he just liked being around people. Hank “chose quieter work.”

Maybe he understood ma better than I do.

Of course, he also ate off the floor, drank from the toilet, and licked his private parts, so before we elevate him to an ancient philosopher, I should mention Hank was my best friend, and a golden retriever.

Away from Dixie, Hank loved the beach. Stayed close but preferred forging his own path through the dunes or chasing bait in the shallows. Always within sight.

Old Hank and I understood each other that way. Close never had to mean crowded. Like the tide. It comes in. It goes out. And somewhere between the two, for just a moment, the water seems to catch its breath.

My dad wasn’t always a big believer in catching your breath. He was old school, Greatest Generation, work-from-can’t-see-to-can’t-see. Best man I’ll ever know. Whenever I planned a day off or vacation, he’d summon that wise expression and remind me, “Sure, son, God rested too. On the seventh day. Just remember, He also worked the first six.”

He always said it with a micro-smile. I saw it.

And tucked inside his little sermon was something we Jews have understood for thousands of years.

Shabbos. The Sabbath.

Six days we build, fix, worry, work. Then Friday evening comes and we stop. Not because everything is finished. Never is.

Candles are lit. Wine is poured. Challah is shared. Family gathers around the table. For one evening and one day, the unfinished is allowed to remain unfinished.

The world keeps turning without our help.

Maybe that’s the point.

I wish I could tell Skipper and Hank what I’ve been thinking. Better late than never, they say. Not always. We lost them both within the last two years. I miss them, but this isn’t about mourning. They gave me too much friendship and loyalty for that.

Skipper wanted the noise gone.

Ma suggests the space between has value. Hank seemed perfectly content living in it.

And for thousands of years, Shabbos has been making room for it.

Perhaps they’re all right. Maybe silence isn’t where everything disappears. Maybe it’s where we finally make room for what matters.

Rest assured, the committee will meet again. It always does.

Maybe, just maybe, when the committee finally falls silent, even for a moment, we might understand a little better the sound of silence.