There's a particular kind of silence that lives in the throat of a boy who can't get his words out. I knew that silence intimately. Growing up in Roosevelt, I carried it everywhere — into the classroom when the teacher's eyes landed on me, into the kitchen when a grown-up asked me a simple question, into the schoolyard where the other kids passed words back and forth like a ball I could never quite catch. The thought would be fully formed and burning in my head. Then it would

That's the efficiency trap. We are wired — especially us men — to measure our worth by output. By speed. By results.

My daily briefings — which I send to myself every morning before the world's agenda takes over — almost always begin with scripture. And the verse I return to more than any other is not Romans 5. It is 2 Corinthians 12:9: