All profound things, and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence. . . . Silence is the general consecration of the universe.
—Herman Melville
This change we’ve made, this decision to become a parent—it has uprooted everything. It’s like we were hit, suddenly, by a cross-fire hurricane. The house is a mess. The schedule is grueling. There is never enough sleep, never enough time in the day.
Even the cool, quiet dark is pierced by the shriek of a man who has stepped on a pile of LEGOs . . . and the shriek is coming from your mouth. Yet to be good at our jobs, to be good at this parenting thing, we must endeavor to find stillness. Because we need time to reflect, to focus, to find the calm that will restore and reboot us.
Where will we find it? It won’t be in those measly two weeks of vacation or by cutting and running and fleeing. No, we must find the stillness within the chaos. It might not feel like these moments of quiet can exist with all the crying babies or arguing teenagers, but they can.
If we just look within. We can find stillness, if we take advantage of the early morning before the house is awake or those precious minutes after the kids are in bed. But we really have to drink those moments in to get the most from them. We can’t defer these chances in favor of our phones or Netflix. We must take time with a journal. We must enjoy that cute but preposterously slow walk from school to the car or from the car back into the house. Soak up the quiet. Store these moments in your soul so you can have them always.
Find the stillness. So much depends on it.