32 Days of Christmas: Day 4
It was on a night much like last night. A night that wrapped the world in a thin, cold hush, when I stood before my Form Four classmates to speak about silence.
I remember that night I felt the echo of my own breath louder than anything I planned to say. The breath of pojo and ugali was lingering faintly in the air; not a meal worthy of praise, but always faithful enough to see us into the next day.
We had already changed out of our uniforms into civilian clothes—the small freedoms granted by a Round Square school creating an illusion of choice in a world built on routine. As I walked to the front of the room for evening devotion, I wondered whether silence itself was watching me, curious about what I might dare to reveal about it. I had chosen that title partly because it felt cool to my teenage mind, but mostly because silence was the language we had been taught to converse in.
I remember my classmates settling into their seats, their faces glowing faintly under the fluorescent lights, their bodies weary from the day’s weight yet still open to the possibility of learning. I remember saying that maybe silence wasn’t totally the absence of sound but the presence of everything we carried but never said: the uncelebrated triumphs, the unspoken fears, the hopes too fragile to expose to careless ears. And as I continued to speak, the room seemed to still itself, not in reverence but in recognition.
I remember preaching: silence is the witness of every late-night struggle during preps, every whispered prayer before exams, every private promise to rise above circumstances that tried to shape us too early. I spoke about the way silence teaches you to listen—to the rhythm of your own thoughts, to the murmurs of unfinished potential, to the distant hum of futures waiting patiently. And how in that listening you come to understand that success can, but does not necessarily need to announce its arrival with trumpets. Because when it is born from quiet consistency, from the disciplined persistence of showing up even when no one is seeing, it will eventually speak for itself in a voice clear enough to be heard without shouting.
When I finally stepped down that evening, swallowed once more by the murmuring routines of school life, I carried with me a knowing that has never left me—that if you dare listen to the sound of silence, it will teach you everything about who you are becoming.
✍🏽Reagan.