“Monday 5 Things” ….. Calm …..
January 19, 2026 by D. Paul Graham
Ever curious and always amused by the quirks of life, join D. Paul Graham each Monday for more M5T pondering.
“Calm is a Choice” photo by D. Paul Graham. Ebenezer Baptist Church, King Center, Atlanta GA 2025
There are places that don’t just tell history, they hold it. Walking the grounds in Atlanta where Martin Luther King Jr. lived, worked, worshiped, and is laid to rest, you feel space differently. Not as a visitor or spectator, but as someone standing inside the consequences of choices that reshaped a nation.
In a moment when the world feels tense, divided, and perpetually on edge, there is a certain quiet that carries gravity. Quiet, but not empty. Reflective, but not comforting. Stillness that doesn’t soothe. It clarifies. It reminds you that history isn’t distant or resolved. It’s recent. It’s unfinished, and it presses firmly against the present.
You don’t leave inspired in the abstract. You leave aware that many questions Dr. King raised remain unanswered, that neutrality has never moved history forward, and that calm is not disengagement, but resolve.
This morning’s M5T is about calm. Not as escape, but as clarity in a world that so desperately needs both.
1. CALM IS NOT THE ABSENCE OF NOISE. Calm is choosing what you let shape you.
Noise is cheap. Outrage is abundant. Monday mornings arrive screaming for your attention. Calm doesn’t pretend the noise isn’t there. Calm simply refuses to let it dictate the day. Calm is a filter. It’s a decision about which voices deserve your attention and which ones are merely demanding it. Most urgency is borrowed. Calm gives you the courage to return it unopened.
2. CALM IS USUALLY INHERITED. Hurry is rarely required. We rush because we have been taught to confuse speed with importance. Very little of consequence improves when forced. Calm invites a pause long enough to ask, “is this actually urgent, or is it just familiar?” Ten unhurried minutes often prevent ten unnecessary corrections later. Calm isn’t slow. It’s deliberate.
3. CALM IS CONFIDENCE. Without the need for a performance. True calm doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t posture or react for effect. It signals trust, in judgment, in timing, and in values. Calm leaders don’t chase every provocation. Calm thinkers don’t mistake volume for truth. With calm, you learn to stand without rushing, to reach without grasping. To the hurried eye, stillness appears to be inaction, unsettling those that need motion to feel powerful. To the calm and wise, it is strength.
4. CALM CREATES BOUNDARIES. Boundaries create moral clarity. When life is packed edge-to-edge, everything feels like an emergency, and very little gets properly examined. Calm restores margin, which is the space where discernment lives. Margin is where you notice what matters, where empathy has room to breathe, and where better questions replace louder answers. History is rarely changed by frantic people. It moves when someone purposely creates space and chooses wisely within that space.
5. CALM IS NOT PASSIVE. Calm is practiced resolve. Calm doesn’t mean disengaged, indifferent, or neutral. It means rooted. It means choosing response over reaction. Calm is built in small, repeatable decisions. What you read first, what you ignore, how you speak, and when you wait. Especially on Mondays. Especially when it would be easier to rush, react, or retreat. Real calm has always been the posture of people who move history forward.
Here’s to starting your Monday with calm and carrying that forward for a week shaped less by noise and more by intention.
© 2026 D. Paul Graham, All Rights Reserved
Paul continues to start his day with calm. Everything else can just wait in line.
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