What is it about the pitch of a person’s voice that can convey a message, as much or more so than their spoken words?
A woman last week was walking much of 17th Street, the main street in our neighborhood. She walked a measured pace and yelled one word repeatedly as if creating a one-person protest; a few blocks away from intersecting her on the sidewalk – her screams of one word rang out in fierce volume penetrating us nearby with what felt like surround sound:
No!
No!
No!
With every other step, she yelled “no” over and over in fever pitch.
The tenor in her voice held a mix of fierceness and anger. But it is unclear in my mind now how much of that fierceness was actually meant from her (or was instead being projected from the rants in my own head):
No! more polar political rages
No! more starving for food
No! more racist sexist binges
No! more denied grasps over boundaries as a fleeing people collapse on barbed wire
She kept screaming her “no” and I became concerned that I’d over indulge my own frustrations of this world, caving to a self-righteous pity party.
Then as the woman passed by and echoed onward, a memory of a good friend and colleague floated up about the relationship between justice and persevering. She once said:
“No, NO, NO ….I can’t sit still with the world this way.”
Yes, with some mercy and discipline (and an avalanche of love), forward let us go.
Inner Life Digest 