When the Dam Breaks: The Cost of Silence and What Being Behind the Chair Has Taught Me About Humanity
The reason you don’t feel like you belong anywhere—the reason this place no longer feels like home, why sleep evades you as thoughts run rampant in the quiet hours of the night—is because when you speak, the world listens just barely enough to respond, but never enough to understand.
That societal pendulum keeps swinging, from one extreme to another, carving an ever-deepening divide in our communities. The gap stretches wider, not just in our beliefs but in our willingness to truly listen—to hear beyond our own echo chambers. Yet, within the upholstered cushions and hydraulic pump of that chair, the conversations are anything but. We talk, I cut, talk, cut, and then talk some more-
And then I say,
"It was so great seeing you!" with a warm smile and a hug.
"I always love catching up. Good luck out there! I'll see you next time."
They leave, and for just a moment, everything is quiet and still.
If I'm lucky, I might get a brief pause—to tidy up, grab a snack, maybe even sit. Then the next client arrives, and we exchange greetings, updates on life, new challenges, new opportunities. And then, once again: cut, talk, cut. Laughter, sometimes tears—rinse and repeat.
Some days, it’s a handful of people; other days, it’s almost more than I can bear. With arms-up, nearly in constant motion the entire time. Filling the space with stories, what life has handed us or taken away.
Sure, it would be easier, less exhausting, to keep things light, to small-talk about nothing of consequence. But no. I am not the kind of person who can pluck a mundane topic from midair and deliver it with the enthusiasm of a morning news anchor.
"Oh, why yes! Water is most certainly wet, and football is definitely an active sport!"
"Thank you for asking, I’m fine, and how are you?" he said, with all the passion of a man ordering a side of fries.
This—this painful, ordinary script—is one of the many reasons mental health is suffering, why society, politics, and the world itself feel as if they are unraveling at the seams. Because humans—us, we, them, you, me, myself, and I—we are the cause. Our own natural instincts, our habitual behaviors, shape the very systems that govern us.
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”
Even those who set this great wheel of capitalism in motion—did they do it out of some grand malevolent scheme? Or were they, too, simply acting on their own human tendencies? Rewind even further: every civilization before and after us—driven by the same fundamental behaviors, the same desires, the same blind spots.
And still, after all this time, we remain children in the eyes of the universe. A planet ancient and wise, watching our petty cycles with indifference. Nature itself probably mocks us.
Talk, cut, talk some more. That’s been the rhythm of my days for years now. The steady stream of authentic conversations and transformations, of scissors shaping hair as words shape understanding. In my chair, I’ve heard it all—joys, heartbreaks, whispered confessions, bold declarations. People from every walk of life, every belief system, every ideology, sitting before me, letting their guard down, speaking their truth. And no matter what that truth may be, I listen. Because here, in this space, they know they can.
Somewhere along the way, we stopped believing that was possible. That two people could sit across from each other, disagree, and still walk away whole. We’ve been told that to listen is to condone, that to question is to betray, that the only way to exist is to pick a side and fight for it until our voices are hoarse or to cancel it all together. But I see something different.
Every day, I witness the simple magic of what happens when people are allowed to speak without fear. Not to argue, not to convince, but to share. And when they do, something softens. The defenses lower, the weight lifts. Because in a world that has forgotten how to hold space for one another, for real, honest, messy conversations, a little understanding goes a long way.
Maybe that’s why everything has felt so unsteady for some time now— because for too long, people have been swallowing their words, watching and not doing, worried that one wrong phrase will exile them forever. And now, the dam has broken. Years of repressed opinions, words left unsaid and the internet’s chaos has spilled into real life, and we’re all trying to wade through it, figuring out how to speak, to navigate and to be heard without seeming too insensitive to the reality of things or drowning each other out.
For as long as humans have existed, we have feared them—the other, the unknown, the ones who don’t think, speak, or live as we do. That fear, buried deep in our bones, has been passed through generations, morphing with the times but never truly disappearing. From it, we have built entire civilizations, art, innovation, and connection—but also walls, division, and destruction. It is both our greatest strength and our deepest flaw.
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
But if I’ve learned anything from the thousands of conversations I’ve had behind this chair, it’s that true connection and real change isn’t about saying the right thing, doing the right thing or keeping quiet. It’s about being willing to be truly seen, as you are, for who or what you are. To show up, to listen, to act, to observe, to speak your truths and allow others to do the same. To let the dialogue unfold without the fear that it will cost us everything, because either way it will cost us something. Simply put— To Live and Let Live.
If we keep forgetting where we started as a species, we’ll never recognize just how little we’ve actually evolved. We like to believe we’ve built something untouchable, that we are the pinnacle of civilization, but if you want to get technical, this version of society is barely a blip on the grand timeline of human existence. The United States is only 248 years old, The ancient Egyptian civilization lasted over 3,000 years—that’s longer than the entirety of modern Western civilization as we know it. The Roman Empire? 1,500 years. The Indus Valley Civilization, one of the first great urban cultures, thrived for nearly 2,000 years before it faded into dust. And the Digital Age? It has barely existed for 50 years.
If history has proven anything, it’s that no civilization is immune to collapse. And yet, through every rise and fall, one thing has remained the same—humans. Our fears, our paranoia of "them," our endless cycle of division and unity. Perhaps it’s time we learn from the past instead of repeating it.
Because at the end of the day, no matter how advanced we become, no matter what “side” or path we may find ourselves on, or the labels we wear. We are all saying the same thing, just using different words and actions to express it. We are all just people trying to exist.
The world doesn’t need more rulers or rebels, more canceling, more trends, more technological advances, more phones, or more walls built between us. It needs more conversations without conditions, no matter if we agree with them or not, good or evil, villain or hero, right or wrong. It just needs more rooms where we can be. Where we can talk, cut, talk some more— and walk away better for it.