Chapter 12Verse 15

A quiet kind of strength: being someone who doesn't unsettle others, and who has enough steadiness not to be easily unsettled by them either.

Krishna describes someone easy to be around and hard to knock off balance: they don't unsettle other people, and other people don't easily unsettle them. Free of the swings of elation, envy, fear, and anxiety. That person, he says, is dear to him.

This is part of the list of qualities of the devotee Krishna holds dear, and it describes a two-way steadiness. Not disturbing the world means you aren't a source of friction, drama, or pressure for the people around you. Not being disturbed by the world means you have enough inner ground that other people's moods and events don't capsize you. The four things named, elation, envy, fear, anxiety, are the usual channels through which the world gets a grip, and freedom from them is what makes both directions possible.

Think about the people who lower the temperature of a room just by being in it, and are also hard to rattle. They're usually not the loudest or the most impressive. They've just stopped running on the reactivity that makes someone both agitating to others and easily agitated themselves. That's a quiet kind of strength, and it's built by working on the fear and envy underneath, not by performing calm.