The Quiet Place

Have you ever had one of those times? One of the times where you’re sitting staring at a computer screen or with your nose in a book, and it’s three thirty in the morning and you need to get out. Not for anything in particular, you just feel that you should be outside, or that you need to mull life over.
         
So, you get off of your chair, and you leave your house. Yet it’s in the middle of the night, and you can’t just go anywhere. Where can you go? And then you remember your place. It’s that special place, the place where you went when you were a small child to go and think. It’s the place where you pretended you were a king, or a wizard. It was a place only you knew about, a place where a kind of magic came alive for you.

         Do you have a place? I’m sure you do. It’s the place where you can go when it’s late at night and you don’t have anything to do. Maybe you have several places. Your place doesn’t have to be fancy, or luxurious. Mine is a simple root sticking over the edge of a small slope that overlooks a road. It’s not comfortable really, and there’s nothing particularly interesting there either.

         Yet, there is something at that place. Something that makes me feel that if magic exists, it’s there. It may just be the memories I have of there. The memories of talking with my brothers, of throwing rocks at the stop sign at the other side of the road, and subsequently getting yelled at for throwing rocks at the stop sign. It may be the memories of sitting in the shade, wondering about life, or about the sun, stars, and the moon.

         That place is where I feel safe. I don’t quite know why, because that root has been exposed and creaky for about five years now and is liable to break at any moment. It’s more because that is where I feel closest to God, because that’s where I think of him the most. It might be because that’s where I’m safe from society, where noone can come get me, where noone can call me, where I am alone, and in solitude.

         So, maybe you should get such a place. Or if you have one, you should visit it more often. I always go to this place for quiet solitude and to think and analyze my life. There is an aura of quiet around my place, an aura that aids me as I think over life. This simple root holds meaning for me, meaning that will last long after the root has rotted away.  This is my quiet place.