17 Oct
2026
Some of the strongest lessons I ever got came without a lecture. When I misbehaved as a little boy in Jamaica, my great-grandmother didn't shout at me. She walked me up the hill and sat me down beside her in silence. I didn't understand it then. I understand a lot more of it now.
I grew up in Westmoreland with my grandmother, Lynn Burkett, my grandfather, Arnold Burkett, and my grandmother's mother, my great-grandmother. In my memoir Neglected But Undefeated, I described her as short, gray-haired, high-sock-wearing and light-skinned.
She was always trying to discipline me and teach me what was bad and what was good. She hardly ever came down from the hill where we all lived. So, as a boy, I worked out a simple plan: if I wanted to stay away from her, I stayed at the bottom.
My plan didn't always work. Whenever she got mad at me, she would find her way down the hill and take me back up with her. Then she would make me sit down next to her in silence while she just looked down the hill at what other people were doing.
That was the punishment. No shouting. No long speech. Just the two of us sitting still while life went on below us.
For a boy the streets were starting to call Bad Boy Johnny, a boy who loved running, climbing hills and making noise, sitting still was not easy. I won't pretend I remember every thought I had up there. But I remember the silence, and I remember who I was sitting beside.
As a man, I can't say for sure what was in her mind. But here is what her way of correcting me says to me today:
I wrote many lines in my book about what matters most in life. This one fits her well:
"In life nowadays, it matters to most of us what we do and how much we have in our lives. However, it should be who we have beside us through our lives that really matters."
— Jonathan Anthony Burkett, Neglected But Undefeated
My great-grandmother didn't have to say much. She put me beside her. Looking back, that was its own kind of message.
In 1993, when I was six, I left Jamaica to live in Miami. Before I left, my great-grandmother, who was always quiet and always wondering about me, gave me a big hug. She told me she loved me and never to forget about her, because she never knew when her last day on earth was going to be.
I haven't forgotten her. When I landed in Miami, all I wanted was to go back to my great-grandmother, my grandmother and my grandfather. And when I went back to Jamaica in November 1996 for my grandfather's funeral, I saw her stand, with some help, when everyone in the church rose.
She was a woman of few words. The ones she gave me were enough.
If you are raising or guiding a child, you don't have to copy her exactly. But you can borrow the idea. When a child acts out, try bringing them close instead of pushing them away. Sit together for a few quiet minutes before you talk, so both of you can cool down. Then, when you do speak, keep it short and clear about what was wrong and what is right. That is what my great-grandmother did in her own way: she taught me what was bad and what was good, and she let the silence do part of the work.
The same idea works for you as an adult. When you feel yourself about to react, a few minutes of silence can keep a small problem from becoming a big one.
You can read more about my family in Jamaica in Neglected But Undefeated on my Books page, and find more of my words on my Quotes page. Then think of the quiet people who shaped you. If they are still here, go sit with them for a while.
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