The silence is still there

Today I hear new, old noises. As I lay in bed in the dark this morning, cars were travelling through the valley, people heading back to work. There was the faintest background hum—sound waves coming off the state highway to the north. I felt an uncomfortable vibration begin inside me in response, and a disappointment about both the internal and external disquiet.

In New Zealand, from today, businesses that have been closed, unable to operate under alert level 4, can start up again (as long as they can maintain the required physical distancing).

When our government first announced that we had to stay home, I felt immense relief, and it was not related to thoughts of slowing the pandemic. I felt like a weight had been lifted. I could finally stop, and so would everyone else.

Feeling out of the step with the world is an uncomfortable thing. Admitting I like this new slow life when others want to rejoin the world and resume their lives, or desperately need to in order to survive, also feels uncomfortable. 


It’s just that I was really ready for this. If this had happened in previous years I’d be having a whole different experience now. If it had happened when my sense of self was built around the work I did, I’m not sure how my 20-something self would have felt . If it had happened in any of those years when I had small children and crushing PND, I shudder to think. 

It just so happened that I’ve been exploring the idea of ‘staying home’ for a couple of years now. It's been about how to feel connected to where I live, how to stay connected with myself, and how to stop distracting myself from how I feel. 

Over the last few months I had been paying attention to the itchy-feet feeling that would see me cajoling the kids into the car by whatever means possible, and often out of line with their own preferences. To do anything, go anywhere, do something for pete’s sake! 

Why couldn’t I just stay home? What was so hard about that? 

For me it was because it felt like everyone else was ‘out there’ doing something and I should too. Everyone else was doing something better, something more fun, more active, more outdoorsy, more engaging, more social, more productive. Going out to ‘do something’ was me trying feel in step with the world. So when the world stopped, I finally felt like I could, legitimately, stop trying. There was nothing to keep up with.

I don’t want my sense of belonging, or my way of being, to be tied to how other people choose to live. I want to live in a world where people get to freely choose the pace they want to live at, and the kind of life they want. 

Today I’m listening for the silence in which the noise gets to exist. The silence is still there. And I’m still here; still, quiet.