The Magic Found in Paying Attention to the Silence
The swifts looked stamped on the pastel morning sky, where the Douglas firs stretched to meet the setting moon. As I let the dogs out early in the morning, hot coffee cupped in my hands, I kept thinking to myself how I love this time—not because anything happens, but because nothing does. I’m not trying to optimize my day or hack this or that. I’m not even reading or journaling.
These became 10 quiet minutes before the house roared to life. I liked to watch the dogs sniff the air with their damp noses. Maybe they had always been aware of this—the fullness of silence. Maybe, to them, it had a scent.
In January, I wrote about my endless pursuit of more in search of wildness. When I finally stopped running after everything I had been told I should want, I thought the hard part would be stopping. I did not yet understand that stopping was the easy part. There was no immediate revelation. Instead, something slowly began to take root in the bare clay of me, in the space once filled by chasing more.
The Silence No One Talks About
There is a silence that nobody talks about: the one that follows when life demands that you stop moving along the path you have been on. When you must fully cease what you have been doing, or when a period of life comes to an end. It can follow a job loss, a health crisis, caring for a sick parent, or your last child heading off to college. Suddenly, there is no certainty. All the plans wither and tomorrow can feel like a prison rather than a new beginning. This kind of silence was terrifying to me because, initially, it felt empty, a deep, endless chasm with no way out.
The poet Rilke told us that silence could be a companion. I desperately wanted silence to be my answer. I believed that if I finally became silent enough, like a diligent student, I’d get what I wanted.
That’s not what happened. What it became was hours in the car every day dropping kids to and from school. Laundry. Dental appointments. Admin. Pets. Walking. Tea. Prayer.
Behind the ordinary everyday was something I feared deeply—spaciousness. A life free from endless goals, planning, chasing, and doing. For years, I imagined this space lying just beyond the threshold of my daily life, and that if I could just steal away a few hours, I’d have the mental capacity to rework a book chapter or get answers to the big life questions I felt I was owed.
But when spaciousness arrived, and I got off the wheel of chasing more, it didn’t give me these things in the way I thought it would. I stopped trying to fill an empty space with meaning. I stopped trying to intellectually produce my life—and myself—long enough to realize that neither had ever needed to be forced.
Autumn, Then Winter
After spending so long chasing and trying to force every season of my life into eternal summer, I finally allowed myself (and life) to become autumn. I let the leaves drop to the earth and stopped trying to rescue everything that was ending. I saw all my old ambitions fall away from their branches and the identities I clung to wither and release themselves to the ground.
Then I allowed winter to blanket my life.
I stopped demanding brittle branches produce perfectly ripe fruit. I stopped seeing stillness as laziness.
But little did I know that, deep in the frozen earth, energy was gathering itself in secret, beyond what the eye could see or measure. This winter was not a failure or punishment before my life could begin again; it was the season of being held in primordial darkness, where the old life decomposed and I was asked to trust that what was true would remain.
Under the maple tree, with the ground still frozen by winter frost, a single snowdrop bravely announced spring’s return. And I began to recognize what the birds already knew, what the dogs sensed in the morning—that this silence, this vast, cold emptiness, was filled with divine presence, and I could only receive it by becoming present to everyday moments.
The wildness I had been seeking earlier had not disappeared when I stopped chasing it; I had simply overlooked where it lived.
Through nature and the benevolence of the Great Mother, I had been offered signposts all along. The swifts soaring across the morning sky. The dogs lifting their noses toward something I could not sense. The trees surrendering their leaves.
The wildness was not calling me away from my life; it had always been moving silently within it.
The medieval mystic Meister Eckhart taught us that we must let go before we can truly receive. I had understood this intellectually. I had even taught it. Now I was beginning to live it: letting go was not simply about stopping but about noticing the divine presence that had always been there in the silence.
At times, that silent divine presence felt so overwhelming that I could do nothing but stop clinging and open my hands to what had always been freely given.
The morning light. Meaningful conversations. My kids’ laughter. The prayers that felt less like routine and more like sustenance.
The ordinary became liturgy.
I had believed that letting go of the pursuit of more would make me fearless and free to chase whatever was waiting beyond the life I knew. Instead, it made me dependent on something greater than myself. I didn’t become stronger on my own terms. I became receptive to a strength far greater than my own, and what I found there was a soft place to land.
In the spaciousness of this silence, I became less interested in what—who—I was becoming, and a new question began to form in my heart: “What is that divine presence asking of me today?”
Part of me still prays for a three-year plan, but I keep getting Monday. I catch myself in a state of vigilance, looking out for a spiritual neon sign pointing toward a door opening onto the life I’m meant to live. But now I know that’s just the old “seeking more” energy in a different outfit.
Just Be Available
This silence hasn’t given me answers, but it has given me something slower: a patient and humble attention to the life already around me.
The dogs sniffing something moving in the morning air. The way the maple tree looks from my kitchen window as the light changes across the seasons. My kid telling me something about Pokémon while I resist the urge to hurry him.
This kind of attention doesn’t feel impressive. There’s no gold star at the end of the day or finished product that I can hold up as proof that I spent my day well. And yet, I’m beginning to wonder if this was the invitation I had been waiting for. Not to become more visible, important, certain, or fearless. But to just be available.
Available enough to sit with the discomfort of “no plans.”
Available to feel what lies beneath the words.
Available to beauty before I pull out my phone and try to capture it.
Available to affection before I decide whether I have time.
Available to that divine presence woven beneath the ordinary things I once overlooked.
Perhaps the wildness I was looking for was never going to arrive as an escape out the back door of my life; it was here all along in the silence—untamed and unseen in my everyday Mondays. The birds, the dogs, the frozen earth, and the brittle branches had always been pointing toward this truth: life—my life—was still unfolding even when I could not see it. Something was always gathering itself in the darkness.
I’m still learning not to act on every idea. I still want certainty and reassurance that this silence is a safe place. But often now, I let these questions remain unanswered.
I open my hands, not to receive but to give thanks for the fullness of what’s unseen. I allow myself to be exactly where I am.
Questions to Live Inside
And so, as we head into a new season, I’m going to leave you with the questions I’m learning to live inside:
What might become visible in your life if you allowed the wild silence to remain unfilled?
What have the birds, the trees, and the ordinary moments been quietly asking you to notice?
What might happen if, instead of searching for what comes next, you become available to what is already here?
Until then, may you notice the divine presence inhabiting the eternity of your everyday.
May you trust the unseen life gathering beneath what appears still.
And may the spaciousness you once feared become the place where you meet what has been waiting for you all along.
Emma Tynan is a modern Irish mystic, spiritual teacher, and writer living in the Pacific Northwest. She is currently writing her first book and facilitating international luxury retreats in devotion to Mary Magdalene.
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