Will

by Will Smith

And at some point, just before sunrise, I noticed it: silence. My inner roommates had stopped talking. It was euphoric. Mother let me bathe in the peace of my inner quietude for about forty minutes. Then, without words she conveyed why I needed to stop talking: In essence, she told me I should be still, and I should be quiet, in order to better observe and understand the people and circumstances around me. She had watched me batter myself for so many years trying to impose my Will on the world. Her point was, if I stopped talking and thinking so much, I could see and sense the universal tides and I could align my energies to them and achieve twice as much with half as much effort. I heard an echo of Gigi’s words to me so many years before: “You know, if you stopped talking so much, maybe you could see some of those hits coming.” Minimizing my talking became my practice for maximizing my awareness. I had always seen the world as my battlefield; I now understood that the true combat zone was my mind.