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I’ve reached the age where certain truths become evident, some welcome, some not, but finally, since they do ring with the weight of “truth”, I believe that all these “arrivals’ are finally welcome.. comforting, the way arrival at home is comforting.

For me, a truth that has rumbled my world, and is now settling down into the ground rock of settled reliable earth is this one: finally, no matter what, despite all the lure of the storm und rang that life’s dramas bring, finally….there is actually nothing left to say.

It’s like when a relationship truly ends….both people know it, deep down they do…but habit or fear or well….terror…keeps people hanging on to each other, and the world between them, around them becomes very NOISY as words fly from one person to the other, to try to fix it, change it, repair it, soothe it, destroy it, decimate it, wipe the hands clean of it….NOISE…the NOISE. I’ve a pal or two who have stayed in relationships that made them miserable because they preferred that misery to the NOISE that would ensue if they tried to end it.

We all talk far too much.
Have you noticed that?
In fact, our world gets into terrible trouble when all the people in power talk too much, bloviate too ridiculously (I can think of one US President who currently does that in a wya that may end us all), bargain, make excuses and demands, express conflicting philosophies, attempt to WIN with words.

Finally, SILENCE seems a truly blessed thing to me. I am stunned to realize how truly true that fact is for me in my heretofore loud lif.e

I’ve always rather appreciated it, Silence, quiet, the calm of no sound.

Case in point: I’d come home from my nightly Les Misérables performances on Broadway, my ears so saturated with the sounds, the clashes, the demands, of a thirty-five piece orchestra supporting us, blasting into us, that once i got home to my Upper West Side apartment, I blocked out all sound, turning on no music, no soft jazz, no nothing, because my ears were just so damned tired! And I remember relishing going into the countryside on days off and listening to how vast, how soothing the Long Island Sound waters and beaches would be….my ears reached for the quiet….as did my eyes seek the horizon. Silence. Horizon. Restful.
Calm.
Peace. Because there was no possibility of conflict.
Silence is soothing because it has no opposition…true silence , that is. No intrusion.

So, I am honestly delighted to reach this hoary old age of 77 with a genuine appreciation for how man is wiser if he (or she) is quiet. That old thing about how we are given two ears and only one mouth ? Signaling perhaps that we are meant to listen more than we are called upon to talk.

Let the world go away?
Not totally.
Just the noise of it….the unnecessary blather, the trembling need to defend with words, the sharp pain of how hurtful words can be.
In other words: shut up and LISTEN.
The ensuing Peace would be stunning indeed.
I pray for it.