Quietness

coming from my hometown of fredericksburg the drive to blacksburg is around 3 and a half hours, depending on traffic. i make this drive by myself and i always ask myself the question, what am i going to do the entire drive? its impossible to listen to my ipod because i dont have a car jack and finding a radio station every 2 minutes can really get annoying. so i often resort to sitting in silence. this may sound weird to most, but why is silence weird? and i have no answer. is it because we are afraid to be alone and silence is pretty lonesome? maybe. is it because we are afraid we are missing out on something else going on? maybe. is it because we are afraid what we are going to think about during this time of silence? maybe. or maybe it is because we are afraid to listen? when we are not talking then we are listening. truly listening to what someone has to say is one of the hardest skills in our world to day to master. the world around us is always so busy it seems like we never have time to listen. our minds are often racing thinking about what we are going to do next, who is talking about who, and i wonder what they think of me. its hard to find time to just sit down and take a break. when i arrived in blacksburg i was greeted with more silence. the willard house was completely dark and no one else was home. the funny thing is, instead of enjoying the silence i decided to fill the quietness by writing this blog about silence. i guess thats a little irony. my challenge though for all of us is to find time this week or next week or this month just to sit down and enjoy some silence. it can go a long way.

ps. i apologize for the creepy picture of the baby. i just found out how to add images.