A calm person is neither weak nor naive.

When we encounter a calm person, we feel like we're dealing with a Martian, and our first reaction is to associate this attitude with weakness, naivety, and even a symptom of low intelligence. A classic optical illusion, due to the glasses we wear today: time pressure and a pressing rush (they say we're in the age of speed, even if they don't explain where to go…); a tendency to use violent, aggressive tools, even in language, now shaped by social media jargon; a natural and widespread distrustthe bad habit of showing off and appearing to be something we are not.

So, without thinking too much, after calling someone who's simply calm incompetent, let's dismiss a style (calmness, in this sense, is like sobriety: it's very visible on the outside) that is actually precious, and in some cases irreplaceable. Only a calm person is able, naturally, to use reason to control their emotional impulses, trapped in very human quibbles, such as anger, fear, and uncertainty. Calmness extinguishes these fires with the force of a fire extinguisher, and helps us stay clear-headed, not give in to impulses and sometimes to emotion.

 Only a calm person is able to absorb, with conviction and rationality, the word of science, resisting the fake news, not giving in to the sirens of alarmism, distinguishing a wise precaution from a useless tendency to paroxysm. In this way, calmness is a language, difficult to practice in times of strong words, slogans, simplifications, fake news, but no less useful for that. These are postures, physical and verbal, built on the relationship, on the need of listening and on the possibility, which should never be ruled out, that the reasons of others are more convincing than our own.

 You can recognize those who are fortunate enough to be calm by the subtleties of a tone of voice, a look, or a smile: small signs of authority, awareness, and emotional strength. The opposite of weakness and naivety. A gentle yet absolute self-control, a strength that doesn't show, that remains within, but precisely for this reason has a greater chance of asserting itself. With tranquility, and without the waste of violence.  La calmness It is a very high and very rare virtue, typical of people who know how to look at the world without keeping their heads bowed to their own navel. And so they manage not to erase passions, desires, dreams, ambitions, but to regulate them according to an order of things that starts from our will.

In this sense, the horizon of calm is only apparently obviousAppearing balanced and approaching the other person with a polite tone is not a surrender, a capitulation, or a sign of weakness. Rather, it is a method that helps one avoid getting stuck in the swamp of resentment, of anger, of closure towards others. Until we're ready, why not, to change our minds, knowing that only the stupid, or the arrogant, remain entrenched in their beliefs and have no intention of changing them. Never.

Calmness, as self-government, is discipline, a typical human virtue capable of persuading and convincing through the front door, through reason and heart, and not through the shortcut of fear or imposition. The calm, in medium-long termThey can't lose their game: they know this form of self-control is a winning one. And it opens up endless possibilities for its application. A leader, in the public sphere as in a family or a condominium, is aware that to assert his arguments, he doesn't need to raise his voice, be rude, shout, or spew out clichés and slogans. He must play his game with bare hands, kneaded with convincing and persuasive reasoning.

The etymology of the word (which derives from the Latin pācātu, participle of the verb pācāre”, what does it mean to make peaceful, to appease, to calm, It indicates a final characteristic of calmness: its strength, enhanced by the exceptional nature of such a rare attitude, makes it contagious. A calm person is unsettling, almost forcing the interlocutor to come to an equal footing, avoiding the useless and obsessive pursuit of new conflicts. The conflicts that lead us to waste time, health, and, above all, human relationships.

 

Famous quotes about calmness

• "Learn to be calm and you will always be happy." paramahansa yogananda

There is a very close relationship between calmness and serenity. Once calmness becomes the method by which we develop our language and our human relationships, the danger of anger, which is always associated with unhappiness, if it doesn't disappear, at least it becomes smaller.

 

• "Whoever wants to impose his will must speak softly." Françoise Giroud

Calmness is also a way of speaking, a style. Similar to sobriety. Two very solid ways to be convincing, without shouting, without raising your voice, without screaming. And without being overbearing or rude.

 

• "True peace is tranquility in freedom." Pope John XXIII

Freedom is the fruit of sometimes unconventional choices. And choosing calmness, in a world of easygoing screamers, translates into peaceful tranquility.

 

• "We must learn to walk before we can run." EL James

Calmness also helps to recognize that in life we ​​need gradualness. Any goal is achieved over time, with passion and conviction.