Luke+B's+Op-Ed+Article

=Luke Listens To Sam Listen to Silence=

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A funny thing happened today: I listened to someone. During History class, we played Sam O'Donnell's video and read two sentences of his editorial. In his video, Sam asked for one thing. He asked for people to sit quietly for a minute and listen.

Our class lasted eight seconds, and that's a generous approximation. Now, don't get me wrong, I smiled ruefully at Sam's challenge at first. It seemed funny in some vague, inconsistent, morphous thoerem. If it was humorous, I could find no good reason to laugh. We were asked to stop talking, pause our incessant buzzing, and listen. Looking back, there was nothing funny about that situation. I mean, sure, Sam is a hilarious person, and that's always good reason to chuckle at what he says, but asking the viewer to listen to the world around them isn't quite his funniest material.

I'm not attempting to challenge, insult, or degrade our classes response. Even the venerable Mr. Geib could be seen chuckling to himself as he watched Sam patiently sit for one minute of silence, even clicking and dragging the bar to the end of the video once we had "seen enough". As a class, we were rendered completely incapable of sitting quietly for ten seconds, let alone a minute. We spent ten times longer listening to Max Castro disjointedly complain about the many latent horrors of math, shirtless picture of him displayed for all to enjoy.

Staying statisically consistent with how much time Mr. Geib spent reading other people's editorial's in class, it's unlikely you've made it this far into my own. Staying consistent with most people's attention span, in fact, it's unlikely. Jim Bern, last year's Validictorian, received one incomplete sentence of attention for his witty, poignant, and thought-provoking opinion about vaccinations. We read all of one piece criticising PDA on campus. As important as that subject matter is, why are we so incapable of staying focused on anything that doesn't immediately grab our attention? I couldn't do it-not really. Most of our class couldn't do it. Maybe Mr. Geib had read those editorials before and patiently listened through Sam's silence, digesting his message. When faced with the task of reading them again however, he, like the rest of us, was just as prone to skimming many student's (presumably) carefully-crafted words. This wasn't done malaciously, of course. There was a time restraint and Geib sought only the best examples, of course. What made Jim's editorial less worthy of a complete read, though? Was it not exciting enough? Was a minute of silence not worth your time?

I'm probably extrapolating a problem where it didn't really exist, but I see a societal problem mirrored in our classroom's eight seconds of silence. We can't pause. We can't analyze. We hop, skim, float, afraid of content. We do what is asked of us, if that, but go no further. Is motion our only option? Did AP steal our ability to stop?

In Sam's honor, and in the honor of the phantom minute, I issue a challenge to all of those who've made it this far. Stop and think. I've never been good at that, trust me, so we can both start at zero. If we should, as Sam says, "take life one step at a time", let's assume we haven't even learned to walk. This article was going to be a rant about politics, stupidity, and why I didn't like something George W. Bush had done at some point. I could have dashed that rant off in a heart-beat, and we both would have been on our merry way. Sam somehow got to me when I wrinkled that paper up and sighed in slow comprehension.

There are plenty of angry liberals out there and there are plenty of impatient people out there. They often overlap. The world doesn't need more of either. The world needs a minute of silence, an ephany, and a slow breath. Oblige it.