That Perfect Quiet

I keep noticing how much I am aware of quiet lately.  In silent moments reclining in my yard during my son's birthday party today, I sat in a cool breeze yet in the warm sun and just soaked it up.  I rented a video game truck for my son and sixteen of his closest friends to play in parked in front of my house, and while I got some fun photos and videos of the kiddos, and laughed at and with them here and there, I really enjoyed the decrescendos... the stillness away from the chaos... the quiet.  Who would have ever thought there would be quiet during a ten year old's birthday party?  But there was.  Even when they switched to nerf wars in the backyard after cake and ice cream.  I was still able to let them be the rambunctious kids they are and yet maintain my own peace.  I also enjoyed casually chatting with parents as they came to pick up their kiddos, and even reveled in some engaging deeper conversation with new parent-friends I'd not met before.  And yet, still I was able to embrace the calm in between.  Perhaps it's partly the age.  It's not fun, nor is it necessary, to micro-manage fourth graders.  So I didn't.  And the party was perfect.  And yet I was relaxed throughout.  I think I've also hosted enough kid birthday parties by now to not let anything stress me out about it.  This is the goal, I think.  Perhaps in almost everything.  To find pathways to peace despite the chaos life brings.  In a way, it's both an embracing of the chaos and a holding fast to peace all at once.  I think we all need both.  But I also think I've had so much chaos that it's time for embracing calm.  I just need it in my bones.  And my interfering mind is getting quieter and letting me actually have what I need instead of just doing all the things all the time.  When I step back and really acknowledge who I am and what I've been through in my forty-one years so far, I suppose it's no wonder I find myself drawn to the calm right now.  

And I also keep finding myself thoroughly enjoying pauses generally.  In the right places in conversations or between actions... reprieves from a generally busy life that is otherwise consuming.  The pauses are pregnant with so many thoughts and emotions and with such beautiful promise.  I cannot help but dwell in them. 

I think I'm so caught up in the silences right now, I don't have many words to share at the moment.  Which I can't help but acknowledge is odd for me, but I'm intent on embracing it because this is apparently what I need to do, who I need to be right now.  I'm just going to revel in this particular silent moment, on a fuzzy blanket, next to my kitties and let my mind go where it will.  It is in stillness that we know our true selves.  Our minds and spirits travel where they need to.  If we pay attention to where we go when it's effortless, that is where we find peace.  The North Star that guides each of us.  I think I've been so caught up for so very long in the what's-next-on-the-list vantage point of seeing the world that this just holding onto pauses, soaking in what's there, and flowing with moments as they come is just... so... refreshing.

And related to silence, somewhere floating between silence on one end of the spectrum and speaking and thinking on overload on the other... is listening.  I am normally such a talker.  And a writer.  As if you don't know that by now.  But I've entered a phase where I find myself listening more.  Absorbing more.  Letting things inform me.   And fill me.  And so I'm quietly processing underneath in my subconscious.  I'm sure more blog posts or scrawled-on journal pages or perhaps even novels will come pouring out of me again soon.  Because I know me.  But right now, I feel as though it's time for simmering.  Soaking in what comes to me.  Interpreting it all.  Inhaling it all.  Existing with as much presence as I can in each moment gifted to me.  It's ever important that we learn how we learn.  Learn how we grow.  Learn how we love.  Learn how we best listen.  And learn how to just sit with things and feel them.  So here I sit.  Absorbing.  A willing listener.   Open.  Feeling.  And knowing deep down that I'm undergoing something deeply different in this quiet shift in space and time for this normally verbose girl....