My neighbor is moving. The Fam and I live in a duplex, so really we only share a few walls with this one single, chain-smoking, cat-loving woman who's relatively quiet, as are we. Today there's a moving truck in the drive and a million adults and children working like a nest of ants to haul all the belongings of the last seven years into this truck, and let me tell you, it's loud. Through all the clanking and yelling, thumping and banging, there isn't much room for having a quiet day on our side of the unit.
Initially I was doing a lot of eye rolling. This was my writing day and they were altering what I had preplanned for. But then I shifted gears, calmed down, and thought that for her this is a huge day. She's starting over in another state and everything familiar about her routine and day to day life are ending. Of course, there's bound to be a ton of noise. She's branching out and growing like a freshly pruned plant and frankly, I'm surprised there's not more noise in this act of rebirth. Sure, she may not be thinking of it like that as she carried box after box to the truck in ninety degree heat, but I'm certain she's changing in this experience. Hell, she's even literally uprooted all of her plants and bundled them for transplant at her new home.
Then something occurred to me: I've just returned home from a few days with fantastic writer friends and I think the only time we shut up was to sleep. We gabbed and giggled for hours. There was nothing but noise from sun up to sun down, but I promise you, I've grown richer in terms of my experiences and writing because of all that wonderful noise. So while I'm still and always will be a relatively quiet person, I've learned the value now of making some noise and breaking the shells around us that we thought we permanent. You need noise in your life sometimes so you can enjoy the richness and growth of the silence afterward.
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