Over the recent holiday, I was telling my nephew’s girlfriend that I sleep with earplugs because I’m such a light sleeper.

“Oh, I just can’t stand wearing earplugs!” she blurted out. “It makes me feel like I’m stuck inside my head!”

“Thoughts are definitely clearer when there’s no noise,” I responded.

“Yes!  That’s it!! I just don’t like to get that close to my thoughts!”

“Funny,” I smiled.  “I like to lie in bed as I’m waking up in the morning and consciously examine my thoughts.  Having the earplugs cancels out any outside noise and allows me to really hear my own inner dialogue.”

“But you can also hear your own heart beating… it makes me feel claustrophobic!” she countered.  “It’s just too much for me and it freaks me out.”

I was chuckling to myself, recalling the exchange when I came across this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“There are voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter the world.”  

 Ralph’s eloquence put so succinctly exactly what I was trying to express to my nephew’s girlfriend.

It’s in those quiet morning hours that the gauze veil separates ever so slightly before clarity is once again obscured by all the mundane thoughts that crowd out the important.  That brief glimpse of the significant is enough to fuel my day and give me direction.  For through it, I am immediately connected to my inner sanctum.  More than that, I am grounded in what really matters.

As my hurried life gets busier and busier, it’s imperative that I take those few precious moments in the morning to center myself.

My inner life, like a garden, bears bounty with tending. Just as I wouldn’t expect to get much from a garden that is only sporadically weeded or watered, when I allow life’s busyness to crowd out my time of solitude, I can’t expect to be at my best. And sometimes, my garden needs a major overhaul. There have been times when it appeared to be more like an overgrown field than a garden…when the weeds have taken over and are, themselves, parched and turning brown. It is a garden that needs a lot of work indeed!  Knowing the exhilaration of what it can and has looked like gives me the courage to dive into the weeds and start pulling, reshaping, watering and transplanting.

It is all worth it in the end, aching back, sore knees, dirt under the broken fingernails and all!

~Zanne

InSearchOfAuthenticity.com

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