Sounds of Silence

I try to get out every morning before work and go for a long walk.

It gets my blood moving and sets the stage for my day.

Usually, I listen to a book or a podcast along the way. And, since I've taken that route so many times, I kind of do it on auto-pilot.

But last week, when I went to head out the door, I realized my headphones weren't charged.

I didn't have enough time to wait for them.

So I did something I don't think I've ever done before.

I went for that walk in silence.

No headphones.

No podcast.

No book in my ears.

Just me, my thoughts and the sounds of silence.

I decided to pay a little more attention to what goes on in my neighborhood at 6 a.m.

The sounds of the birds. The shades of green in the grass.

A half mile down the street, a rooster crowed. I never knew I had a neighbor who owned one!

There was that house with the basketball hoop sitting at the edge of the driveway. It's been there the entire time I've lived here - more than seven years.

I always assumed someone had put it out there for garbage.

Now I wonder if their kids used to play basketball in the street.

I noticed the different styles of houses and the landscaping I'd walked past hundreds of times without really seeing.

I wondered why the family with the bright turqouise door chose that specific color. I'm sure that's a fun story.

A man was carefully cleaning the windows of his truck at 6:30 in the morning. I wondered if he was retired and found myself just a little jealous.

When I walked by the middle school, I noticed they had installed a fence around the drainage ditch. When did that happen?

When my boys went there, kids were always climbing down to retrieve basketballs and soccer balls that had rolled in.

Smart move, I thought.

I noticed so many things I haven't noticed in years.

And more than that, I noticed how good it felt to just be.

Just me, my thoughts, and the world waking up around me.

No voices filling every quiet moment.

No technology distracting my focus.

For those 42 minutes, life felt just a little simpler.

It reminded me that silence isn't empty.

Sometimes it's exactly where we notice the things that matter most.

And these days, I think we could all use more of that.

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