Quiet Clarity is a 2x/week newsletter and podcast for people who want to build a life of presence, depth, and deliberate intention.
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Most people think silence is boring.
But if you’re honest, doesn’t it feel terrifying sometimes?
Like the moment the noise stops, something darker rises up?
I used to think I feared stillness.
But what I really feared was meeting myself in the silence.
Where It Showed Up in My Life
Most of my friendships were built on being loud.
There were the friends who validated every achievement—they'd light up when I told them about my new PR at the gym, my latest business win, the girl I was dating.
Their approval felt so good.
We'd trade accomplishments and keep earning points in some invisible game we were all playing.
Then there were the competitive friends.
Our entire friendship existed inside the arena.
Every conversation had subtle digs wrapped in jokes.
The taunts, the one-upmanship, the constant measuring.
We pushed each other, sure, but we were also exhausting each other.
Our bond was built on who could climb higher, faster, harder.
But then there were a few people who just... didn't play.
They moved through the world differently.
While everyone else was frantically collecting achievements, they seemed to exist in some other universe where none of it mattered.
I'd share my latest accomplishment—the lifts, the money, the whatever—and they'd smile warmly, genuinely happy for me.
But I could tell it didn't move them.
It was like showing someone a beautiful painting when they were already looking at the sunset.
This drove me insane. But for some reason, I wanted to know more about them.
So I tried harder. I got more fit, made more money and refined my appearance.
Upgraded everything that could be upgraded. Surely something would impress them.
Still, nothing. They loved me, but not for any of these things.
What more could they possibly want?
And why was I so desperately drawn to people who didn't seem to need anything from me?
What the Wisdom Reveals
There's a story Alan Watts tells about a man who goes to a Zen master seeking enlightenment.
The master asks him, "What do you want?" The man lists everything—wisdom, peace, understanding.
The master says, "I can't give you what you already have."
This is what my unusual friends understood that I didn't.
While I was busy becoming, they were simply being.
The other friendships were all agreeing to the same lie: that we weren't enough yet.
We needed each other to confirm we were making progress toward some imaginary finish line where we'd finally be worthy.
But these different friends had opted out of the race entirely.
In Hindu philosophy, they call this Purnam—wholeness.
There’s a beautiful ancient verse that goes: "That is whole, this is whole. From wholeness emerges wholeness. When wholeness is taken from wholeness, wholeness remains."
We are all already whole, frantically trying to add to what's already complete.
My validating friends kept me chasing the illusion that one more addition would finally make me whole.
With my competitive friends, we burned ourselves out trying to stack more and more onto wholeness. It was as if infinity needed topping up just to feel enough.
But these few were just watching me run on a treadmill, waiting for me to realize I could step off anytime and realize that I was always whole.
They didn't need my achievements because they weren't relating to my accomplishments.
They were relating to whatever was underneath all that noise.
They were waiting for me to drop the performance and just... exist.
How I'm Trying to Live Now
I've started to understand something that feels both profound and absurdly simple: When you just be, there's nothing left to do.
The friends I was so drawn to weren't different.
They'd just:
Stopped the performance.
Stopped trying to become someone.
Stopped needing to prove their worth through motion.
These days, I practice sitting with nothing throughout the day.
No phone, no book, no meditation app telling me how to meditate.
Just me and the stillness that whispers: I’m already enough.
I used to think life was about filling every moment with doing.
But the doing was never the point.
In that silence, I’ve realized three things:
My friends who are constantly moving, striving, chasing are not wrong. They’re still good people, walking their path in their own way.
The more I drop the performance, the more others soften too. It’s like I was reflecting back their striving all along. And when I stopped, parts of them stopped as well.
I still act, build, create. In fact, I’ve probably created more in the last few months than I have my entire life. But it no longer comes from the fear of not being enough.
Because beneath it all, there’s nothing to fix, nothing to add, nothing to become.
We’re already whole.
And when you move from that wholeness, the right actions flow naturally.
