In search of silence

and the practice of staying with Now

Nov 16, 2025

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A song I’m loving:

Yesterday, I went for a long walk at the wetlands near my house and left my headphones at home, trading the usual podcast episode for red-winged blackbirds, crows, song sparrows, wind, dirt under boot, hello’s from passersby, and my own swirling mind. I noticed how it felt like care to meet presence without added noise, to cultivate companionship with my surroundings and thoughts. I noticed how expanding it has been to not add more consumption to a moment than is necessary — to not feel the desire to drown out the life in front of me.

I’ve been craving silence more and more lately, a notable contrast to other seasons of using plentiful distraction as a method of escaping what’s here, now. I find myself getting in the car and not immediately finding something to listen to. My queued podcast list is smaller. There is a palpable longing for more time without voice, more space without input, more experiences without narration other than my own. I’m feeling more and more distant from social media, from the ways distractibility has been built into life. I say I value deep attention, presence, and connection to self and surroundings… yet sometimes, living that value in my actual life hasn’t been easy. There is so much to consume at all times. There is always more to learn, more to understand, and time ever-passing. It can be easy to forget urgency isn’t an agent of learning, and overconsumption isn’t a path toward deeper or embodied understanding. It can be challenging to gift ourselves ample space to just be, to let what we’ve already learned seep in deeper, to stand open to what’s in front of us and trust it has enough to teach us. And it can be itchy to stay with what’s here, without reaching for some sneaky aid that helps us escape even a little bit.

Wanting to fully be in my life isn’t a longheld or familiar feeling. Most of my life was spent planning escapes, leaving the moment, unable to simmer in Now. There was so much unmetabolized pain held in my body that staying with What Is seemed more like a cruel joke than an invitation into something expansive. Yet in my devotion to staying, I’ve learned to see how subtly I can leave, often without even noticing. And this practice of staying has seeped into all the pockets of life where I didn’t even realize I was still searching for tiny doors out of the moment: opening my phone in the bathroom, or at a red light, or while waiting in line. Always having a podcast in my ears when walking. Difficulty staying in my body during moments of tension. Compulsive checking of email. A quiet fixing energy when discomfort arises. Agitation when learning something new. An itchy feeling of wanting to walk out the door during a long yoga class.

There have been so many invitations to notice the impulse to leave and choose to practice staying, even when it feels like I might explode. I at times find myself making excuses for why I need distraction at the ready — for why I can’t leave my phone in the other room, or leave my headphones at home. There is so much compassion for the ways we’ve been conditioned away from ourselves, for the ways our culture strategizes to keep us from noticing our own hearts, for the ways we can convince ourselves we can’t be with what is, for the amount of difficulty we’re being asked to digest every single day, for the ways leaving is actually the wisest strategy sometimes.

And yet every time I choose to notice the leaving and reorient toward presence, it feels like a remembrance of what I truly long for. It feels like a revealing of just how far away we can drift, and also how possible it is to return. It feels like a reverence for just how human I am, just how much practice it can take, and how much capacity I’ve built to meet that practice again and again.

And funny enough, the more I learn to stay, the more I can actually face, be with, and respond to a right-sized amount instead of forcing myself to digest way more than I’m able to. The more I learn to stay, the more I can turn toward what is unfolding with an open heart and the capacity to step out of binary thinking. The more I learn to stay, the more I can notice what my role is, what my task is, and tend to it instead of always assuming I’m falling short. The more I learn to stay, the more I can respond to the moment from presence instead of programming. The more I learn to stay, the more I can actually feel what is asking to be felt, which allows it to move, which allows me to move.

I always thought leaving was where relief was, but staying is where I am finding the most relief. Staying is where I am finding the most willingness. Staying is where I am finding the most access to all of it: the beauty and the betrayal, the heartbreak and the humanity. Staying is where I can hear the birdsong most clearly. Staying is where life is actually happening. And that’s where I want to be, which feels like a real gift.

May staying reveal what leaving can’t ever show.
May staying bring the capacity you assume you’ll only find by straying.
May staying allow the birdsong to be registered more clearly.
May staying support you in attuning to what matters most.
May staying ignite your desire to fully be right here.
May staying be set aside when leaving is actually the right move.
May staying be a practice to orient toward, over and over.
May staying highlight all the beauty available here, too.
May staying tether you to your own widening heart.

Thank you, as always, for being here.

ps. Thank you all for your loving responses to my share about When the Ache Remains; it’s always so tender to let what has been so personal and quiet for so long become woven with more eyes than my own, and I’m so grateful for your kindness and support. It feels like a real gift, to slowly start letting this project unfurl into the world.