When Silence Becomes Complicity

There are moments when something breaks through our practiced calm and lights a fire we can no longer contain.

For me, that spark has come from the recent executions and violence in the streets of Minneapolis. Not because this kind of violence is new, but because it is no longer ignorable. We have reached a tipping point. Enough.

I am at an age and stage of life where I cannot pretend I am still “figuring it out.” I have raised a family. I have built and sustained businesses. I have volunteered deeply in professional and personal communities. I have known love, grief, failure, success, hope, and heartbreak. I have seen systems work and I have seen them fail people spectacularly.

That experience carries responsibility.

Elders are not defined by age alone. Elders are shaped by having lived, paid attention, and integrated what life has taught them. And one of the clearest truths I know is that silence from those who know better is not neutrality. It is a choice that shapes the world just as surely as action does.

Americans are living in a time that requires more than quiet discomfort or private outrage. The question is no longer, “How do I avoid conflict?” The question is, “How is my action or inaction contributing to the world we are creating?”

Every system, every culture, every moment of history has been shaped by what people were willing to tolerate and what they were willing to confront. Elders are meant to help steady the collective when fear, cruelty, or excessive power threaten to become normalized. Not through dominance or moral superiority, but through courage, action, and presence.

I'm not suggesting that we shout at those who disagrees with us. Rather, this is about refusing to look away. It is about telling the truth, even when it costs comfort. It is about remembering that the legacy we leave is not only what we built, but what we allowed.

I believe each of us is being asked a simple but piercing set of questions right now.

How is your voice being used, or withheld?

Where are you staying silent to keep the peace, even when the peace is false?

Where do you feel called to serve, not from obligation, but from conscience?

How are you making a difference today, not someday, not hypothetically, but now?

This is not a call to burn everything down. It is a call to tend the fire wisely. Fire can destroy, but it can also illuminate, warm, and forge something stronger. Purposeful heat is what transforms raw emotion into meaningful action.

As elders, we are not here to disappear quietly. We are here to shape what comes next. To speak when it matters. To act when it counts. To leave the world more just, more humane, and more loving than we found it.

Tend your fire.  Use it well.