A Few Moments of Silence

You know those moments that somehow feel both infinite and fleeting all at once? Like when it feels like there is nowhere else you should be but a second later it’s over and you’re looking back on it already? There are the big kind of moments, like when you get something you’ve always wanted or are surprised by someone you love. But there are also little moments that on paper shouldn’t really be that big of deal, but in that moment you take a second to look around and something assures you that this is important, this matters.

For me this week was filled with a million of those little moments. Nothing specifically remarkable happened, I was just visiting Seattle for a friend’s wedding. But now that I’m back in Utah I feel like I lived a lifetime in those ten days, looking back on another person’s life.

I got to Seattle Friday night and stayed ten days, using my friend’s wedding (and wedding shower and bachelorette party and rehearsal dinner) as an excuse to spend two weekends and 5 week days with the friends and city I used to see every day in the five years I lived there.

I bounced from apartment to apartment, carrying the spare keys to my friends’ homes with me like my own. Riding the busses came back to me easily this time, unlike when I came back for the first time after I’d moved away. That visit everything had seemed foreign, but this time everything seemed effortlessly familiar. I knew what to do and where to go, when to leave and what to bring. This time I went to places I’d never been, wandered through the same places we’d always visit, surprised at how much time I felt like I had. There is never enough time in a visit to a place like Seattle, but this week I wasn’t worried, it felt like I was back for good, or at least like I could come and go as I pleased.

After the bachelorette party I dropped off the bride-to-be at her house before walking the 5 or so blocks to my home for the night. The party had gone well, a dinner cruise on Lake Washington as the sun set was picture perfect and a burlesque show to end the night couldn’t have been better, but as I walked home in the early house of the morning I felt compelled to stop, to take a moment to remind myself that this isn’t daily life, that in a few days I’d be headed back to Utah – no return to Seattle in sight.

I climbed the ramp underneath the freeway and sat for a few minutes, listening to the echoes of the cars overhead and street noise below, letting my mind wander from the present to the future to memories of years past. I felt profoundly independent, in that no matter how many people love or are looking out for me, it still will always come down to me and what I’m surrounded by.

Doing this has become routine when I come to Seattle, I take a few minutes here and there to sit alone in the city and think about who I am and who I want to be. Usually I find myself by the water or at the top of the Space Needle, but it can be anywhere – on a crowded bus, on the couch at a friend’s apartment or under a freeway bridge in the middle of the night. It is in these moments that I understand what it is to believe in a higher power looking over me, feeling awed at how much there is to see and do and understand in the world. Taking deep breaths and doing my best to notice the details around me, I remind myself who I am, who I want to be and how important Seattle has been in helping me figure these things out.

When I’m in Seattle everything feels like a trigger. A scent, a sound, a bus route, or a type of tree, everything is connected to a memory or a person or an idea that keeps building on itself until I’m left with only a feeling, usually love. These triggers make it easy to fall into a moment, to connect all the parts of my life into something that doesn’t need to make sense.

In college the Naughty Princesses and I went to a Quaker church service to check it out. At the end of the service the group sits in silence together until people feel comfortable speaking about whatever they feel like. The aim is to let your mind wander and to share your revelations for the week with your peers. After about a half hour of sitting in silence, we saw that people slowly started to stand and speak about things like a book they read with an interesting idea or a person they met who helped them see the world differently. We listened in awe, the silence somehow making everything that was said more poetic and meaningful. After a few people spoke it became clear that some people took advantage of this audience more than others, but in all it was a pretty inspiring thing to consciously choose to let your thoughts go anywhere and to share any tidbits with a group.

So I was excited to hear that during my friend’s wedding ceremony we were going to have a moment of silence in the Quaker tradition for the bride’s parents. In this instance it only lasted a minute at most, all of us choosing our own ways to spend the silence, but even just that minute of time to take a few deep breaths and look around at the love surrounding us, made the rest of the ceremony a hundred times more moving.

I don’t know all the details about meditation, prayer, breathing exercises or yoga, but I do understand the power of sitting in silence. My life is the better for taking a few moments to look around and take note of where I am.