Here’s a paradox for you. We do better as individuals and communities if we calm down. We do better if, instead of anxious monitoring, overwork, worry, agitation and heated opposition we opt for calm.

We know this but, these days, practice it too rarely. Instead, we either withdraw or lash out.

Another thing about calm – it, like any other great way of being, can be trivialized. Alongside the truth of calm’s power is its potential for being … well … faked – performed, pretended.

The appeal of calm in all its versions shows up in the popularity of the “Keep Calm” prompt generated by the British government in anticipation of WWII. British officials knew that panic inspires chaos. The last thing the country needed, still recovering from the ravages of the war-to-end-all-wars and on the threshold of what became a second worldwide war, was amplification of the instability. So, in 1939, the government printed 2.45 million posters reading “Keep Calm and Carry On,”

Certainly, the British have been saddled with the stereotype of being reserved. And it can be argued that reserve serves in times of great upheaval. Keep your head down. Do what you are able. Help one another instead of tying yourself in self-absorbed knots of trepidation.

But calm must not be confused with its impersonators. Calm is not the equivalent of the three monkeys neither seeing, hearing nor speaking of destruction that is really happening.  Calm is not denial.

Instead, calm allows for pausing. Calm salves the burning insistence of reactivity, it slows snap judgement to measured consideration. It makes possible listening to the substance of who a person is.

Take Dude, for example.

I met Dude last week in Costco. He recognized my husband. They knew each other from years back when they both lived in the same small Montana town. Dude said he’d read about me being a person who knows about psychology. Gary sometimes includes stories of us in his writing, so I remembered not to be incredulous, but instead complimented.

Dude’s face went from smiling to serious and he looked me right in the eye. His forehead all furrowed, he said, “You know anything about transgender?” I said, “Well, I have friends and colleagues who are transgender. Why do you ask?”

Dude ran his hand through his hair. Paused a minute.

Probably around 70, Dude’s a white man who’s worked the trades his whole life. Born and raised in Montana. “Never left, so I never had to come back.”

After enough consideration, he responded. “Well, I just found out my roommate’s trans.” I listened. “I always just thought she was a woman. Didn’t think anything about it. But my niece said, ‘no, that’s a transgender person, Dude.’”

Dude went on to say it didn’t really bother him one way or another, but that all of a sudden here recently she was all mad at him. “I mean, I don’t care about that trans stuff. It’s her choice. But I don’t really know how to tell her that.”

I was about to say, “Do you think you really need to?” when Dude went on to describe a recent argument between the two of them. “I think it was probably just laziness,” he explained, “but I finally had to lay down the law on her not leaving her automatic weapons on the staircase.” He went on, “She didn’t much like that, but, you know, it was a tripping hazard. It also made our other roommate, the lady lawyer, real nervous.”

Dude’s house. Dude’s rules.

I suggested it was likely the tension with his trans roommate had little to do with her being transgender. Dude considered that and said, “Well. I guess that seems right.”

Calm isn’t pitching for a fight. It isn’t insecure. In fact, calm holds good boundaries – matter-of-fact, calmly.

At least in this case, Dude’s operating out of his calm.

That’s good for everybody.