what a quiet life means to me
me, longing
to me, a quiet life is solitude but only in the best sense. it means being comfortable by yourself, knowing that you could live happily with the voice inside your head, just you and your conscious being against the world. it means you could take yourself out to see parts of the world you’ve always dreamt about, parts of your small town where people smile as they pass you by on the street, parts of the home you’ve carefully put together, the home that acts as an extension of everything you love but in material form. a quiet life means being okay with yourself, knowing yourself enough to know what you need when the only colour you’ve seen in the sky is grey for what feels like entire seasons, when it’s sunny and you’re giddy with excitement and when you feel neither here nor there, a little bored, a little tired, but you know you will see the other side. a quiet life is a confident life. one where you know how to tend your garden to make all the right flowers bloom at the right time.
a quiet life is solitude but only at the right times. it’s knowing when it’s time to blow out the candles and throw the blanket off your knees. it’s knowing when it’s time to open the curtains, open the windows and let the songs and gentle taps of nature hit your skin and your ears. it’s having a close knit of friends, who you can be completely yourself around. knowing that they understand if you go quiet for a while, and when you and the world are back on the same page, it’s knowing when to reach out to them again, sip piping hot teas and bare all your teeth as you laugh opposite each other. it’s walking around the small town you’ve moved to and your friends telling you how happy for you they are. it’s visiting them back in the big city and telling them how much you love and appreciate them. it’s wandering bookshops and charity shops and museums. it’s people watching and last minute cinema trips. it’s picnics in the park in august and overstaying your welcome in café bars in january. it’s that soporific feeling you get when you return home, like you’ve just eaten a really good meal, and you could drift off to sleep at any moment with a full heart. it’s looking forward to a day of replenishing tomorrow.
a quiet life is being surrounded by books and words and knowledge and stories and ideas. it’s leaving the world in front of you sometimes and swapping it out for the inner corners of your favourite writer’s minds. it’s highlighting sentences that feel like they have been pulled directly from your heart and soul. it’s ink smudges on your fingertips and the side of your palm you used to try to read as a child to find out how many kids you would have as a big, grown adult. it’s shaky lines under beautiful prose and doodles of love hearts dotted around your favourite ones. it’s spreadsheets and documents and memory sticks and folders and binders dedicated to the books you’ve read and the books you know will destroy you. it’s entire notebooks dedicated to the raw thoughts you have after reading, for your eyes only. it’s reading several books at once and feeling like you’re astral projecting every time you open a different one. it’s dedicating your time on this planet to consuming everything that makes you thankful for being alive, that makes you think so deep your head pounds, that fills you with so much love and appreciation that for a moment you feel a tiny jolt of sadness because you know this can’t last forever and you’ll never read everything you want to read, see everything you want to see, do everything you want to do, love as much as you can.
a quiet life is a private life. it’s one created, made, curated, nurtured, maintained just for you. not even your loved ones know certain things. even certain parts of your home cannot be trusted to hold the secrets locked inside the messy handwriting of your diary. a quiet life is one lived, mostly, for the self. it’s a special one, one that only you understand and requires no justification. it’s one that doesn’t feel the need to shout about it, to tell others about it or cares what others think of it or if it is being done in the right way. a quiet life is one that requires no external validation, online or otherwise. it’s taking pictures and printing them out and sticking them in your private journal. it’s setting up your surroundings that’s pleasing to the eye and being content that only your eyes will ever see it. it’s resisting the urge to perform and to live in the spotlight. it’s knowing you can have a perfectly full life backstage, in the covers of the wings and the shadows.
a quiet life is a life with love. it’s a home full of love; trinkets, belongings, clothes, handmade mugs, gifts from your parents and friends, furniture from the charity shop, handmade jumpers from grandma, unfinished crochet projects, old valentine’s day cards, the candle wax stain on the footstool. it’s your person, your friends, your family close enough to your home that your heart is content, close enough to jump on a train and be there for them within an hour or so. it’s your hobbies and spending a good portion of your time with them, the ones who will never judge you for abandoning them for too long. it’s a small job that pays the bills that you can walk to or get the bus to and walk into without the heavy feeling of dread. it’s loving that your small job makes a genuine, meaningful difference in the world no matter how minor. it’s coming home to a bear hug from your person, messages from friends, a kettle boiling, a cat nuzzling your shins, the sunlight hanging lazily on your living room walls, a soft duvet waiting for your return, all to do it again the next day, with a sense of excitement, of joy, of love for the life you have.
a quiet life means a poetic life. it means a life that knows what it wants, a life that speaks to you every day, something you can communicate with. a quiet life is reaffirmation that you are doing the right thing for yourself every day.
hello quiet readers. i hope you’re all having a wonderful week so far and i hope you enjoyed today’s post. i’ve been thinking a lot about what this substack means to me on a personal note. as i grow older, the call for a simple, quiet life grows louder. yesterday, a man shouted at me on the tube because my bag was touching his back. this was on a train so packed a gang of sardines would have even thought a bit much. i feel like if i never had to ride the central line in london ever again i would die happy. i used to think a fancy office job in zone 1 was a dream come true. if you listen closely you can hear me cackling at that thought in the distance.
i don’t think i want this life anymore. i wish so much i could embody everything i have written about this week. i am nearly there, but breathing in this polluted city air and travelling alongside miserable people who no doubt would also rather be anywhere else is starting to feel a bit too much. one day, very soon perhaps, this week’s post could become a little more autobiographical.
feel free to air your grievances about working life in the comments. drop your manifestations for a quiet life there too. i hope all of us, someday, can live the quiet lives we all dream of.
here is my last post with some monthly reflections, good and bad, and here is my latest youtube video on the importance of calming hobbies.
thank you for being here, i’ll see you next wednesday <3
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This style of writing makes so sentimental. I feel every feeling and yearning for this little life you have just described (I too take on the qualms of the central line daily and I know I just don't belong. Does anyone really?) Thank you for writing this <3
Recently I've been yearning for a similar kind of quiet after my first heartbreak. It will be 2 months of his absence from my life in a few days. This is a new chapter for me as I learn to grieve someone, a connection that is still alive but that can no longer be actively mine. It's a different kind of grief I haven't felt before, a different kind of love too. That being said, it has led me to a lot of self-reflection and growth which has been a very exciting, bright light amidst the darkness of his shadow and the space he left behind. I've done a lot of crying, but I've also done a lot of self-loving recently. From this reflection, I've learned that many of the things that bring me joy and pleasure in my life have deep roots in my need for them to be validated and perceived positively by others. I'm starting to reclaim these passions of mine for myself once again and finding peace and fulfillment in setting boundaries and pursuing some of them first for myself before anyone else. Setting boundaries with myself, realizing that not everything I create and feel needs to be shared with others. The joy I feel is valid and beautiful regardless of whether or not it's perceived or judged by another soul.