I was driving the other day to visit my kids, a daughter 21 and a son 18, they live a couple of hours away, it was one of those perfect driving days, dry and bright with only a few cars on the road. The trip normally takes a couple of hours and usually I'm trying to make good time, but this day, I was all about the journey. I had purposefully turned off the radio, I wasn't interested in listening to music or gab and certainly not the news and its litany of grey. Instead I wanted to think, not about anything in particular, just about whatever it was that I knew would be sitting at the back of my head waiting for all the other busy noise to settle down. I don't know about you, but there are a lot of voices in my head - I don't mean strange voices telling me to vote conservative or buy a chainsaw - but voices that sound out my life. The bits of daily conversation, disagreements, laughs, troubles, desires, frustrations, pain, joy and the random stuff that arrives uninvited. Anyway, I was hoping to quiet all that noise down and give it, the voice in the back of my head, a chance to say what it wanted to say. I am never quite sure what is going to come out. But I do know, that when I take the time to really listen, I am better for it.
It didn't disappoint.
You see the voice, the one from the back of my head, is the wise one, the one that waits until I'm ready and then puts into words that which I really need to hear. It does not admonish me, it simply presents another story. Stories of other possibilities ... of different perspectives ... of alternative views.
I like that voice - the best of me is heard through that voice. Unfortunately it speaks so softly that it's often hard for me to hear it clearly through the din.
P.S. I had a great visit with my kids.
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