Shhh…

listening to the whispers

If we are quiet,” whispered Rabbit, “we shall hear what’s not happening.” - A.A. Milne, “The House at Pooh Corner”

Find some place to be away from it all. A place that sings to your heart. Full of stories, or maybe mere possibility.

If you are not well enough to travel, go there in your mind, your memory or your imagination. You don’t have to travel, though. It could be a quiet corner in your own house - with no media nearby.

Let your ears adjust to the silence. Begin to notice what is not there. Nothing is shouting at you. No loud hype, no pressure. Nothing is even humming there. Not engines, not humans. It’s simply…still.

Now, listen. Sometimes it may take a while - hours, days, even years- but if you keep sitting still you may begin to notice what you had missed before. Distant bird song. The whispered symphony of trees. Clouds slipping on by. Bees, busy. Your own breath. Keep listening…

Maybe you notice the absence of accusation. No one, including yourself, is blaming you for developing a CCD (chronic complex illness). No one is offering you a transaction - if you will only do this, then I will help you. If you would only try harder, then you would get well.

Maybe what you don’t hear is a requirement that you work any longer. No deadlines, no pressures to achieve. Maybe you don’t hear the expectation that you will host family gatherings. It’s someone else’s turn now, their chance to enjoy what you have over the years. Maybe, though you long for it to be different, you still hear no solution for healing, no way to reclaim function lost to deterioration or erosion.

If these seem like pessimistic outcomes, there may be something else. Maybe, as you sit and simply watch the world go about its quiet life, a flicker of insight appears, the delightful kind that wasn’t there before, that only shows up when you stop looking for it.

It might sneak in when you’re not looking. It might not be answers that you’ve been waiting for. It might instead appear as a question you’ve never thought of. Some idea that wasn’t there before. A new question. A brand new one, something you never thought to ask. And maybe the answer to that question then appears as well. Maybe it was there all along, but you hadn’t asked the right question.

If nothing else, sitting in silence like that helps put your body in a healing state, able to maximize whatever energy and function it still has. Your busy mind may want to draw you back out, but if you just keep listening to what isn’t there, you can remain in a state of ease that’s really rather remarkable. Especially given you didn’t expect to feel this good again.

I encourage you to give it a try , and let me know how it goes if you wish.