A quiet performance rewards the people willing to stop producing their own noise.

Some things only become audible when you go still. A soft passage does not fight for attention, so it hands the responsibility to the listener: put down the phone, stop rearranging your evening in your head, stop half-talking, and it opens. Fail to do that and it will pass by without seeming to have offered anything.

Pick one thing this week and give it the harder kind of attention. A piece of music without a second screen, a conversation without a plan for your reply. The reward is not obvious in advance, which is exactly why so few people collect it.