Notice how you fill the day.
Music the moment you get in the car. An episode the moment you sit down. Scrolling the moment you stop. It's not distraction. it's organised escape. And you're not running from boredom. You're running from a question you know will surface when the noise dies down.
The question has no words. It feels more like a pressure in your chest. A sensation that would become a complaint, if you let it get that far. But you don't, because you've learned to turn it into more palatable noise: music, voices, news, anything.
Silence isn't empty
You've been running from silence for years, assuming it was a place with nothing in it. But silence is simply where you hear yourself. And there's so much to hear.
There's your sadness over things you never cried about. There's your anger over things you never knew you were allowed to feel. There's, above all, your longing. for that version of yourself you left behind somewhere, because it was inconvenient.
All of it lives in the silence, waiting for you. Patiently. It will be there today, it will be there twenty years from now.
Five minutes
I'm not asking you to meditate. I'm asking you this: the next time you get in the car, before you put the music on, sit in silence. Five minutes.
Let whatever comes, come. Don't respond to anything. Just listen.
The question will start to find words. Not immediately. But it begins.