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The Empty Room

Sunlight comes through the widows; the rays casting shadows and images that spark the imagination. I sit quietly in a worn and broken leather chair. I remember this. I came here often as a child. It was a vibrant place full of laughter, conversation, and many family gatherings.

The empty room is silent the only noise is the creaking of the chair as I move to pick up a tin container. It is an old tin with a Norman Rockwell painting on the lid. The one of a boy and his dog. Inside I find some marbles, baseball cards, an old black and white school photo and a check yes or no love letter. I feel like I am eavesdropping on these moments in time and the stories that still live here.

It is peaceful here, the sunlight warm and comforting. A breeze is blowing through the open windows and an array of scattered items seems to be speaking to me, asking me to touch them and feel their story. I can sit here quietly and enjoy the things left behind. I wonder if we all had an empty room to sit quietly in, to feel the warm sun on our face, would we be at peace.

I wonder if that time in an empty room would quiet the noise we find in our daily life. We seem to fear the quiet, the empty room. Maybe we embrace the road to success passionately fearing it might slip away. The journey, while filled with excitement, the rush of accomplishment and adventure, also has quiet places where we look within and embrace the peace and calm. Is it success or the empty room that we are more afraid of?

Point Of View:

I use the empty room as an example of the duality of life. So much of our life is filled with attempting to lift ourselves up in life. We strive to be successful, we help others on their journey and we get involved in the community and give of our time and knowledge.

It seems imperative for our ability to sustain this drive that we also find a moment to sit quietly and feel the serenity and calm. We need at times to stop and reflect. We find the strength to climb mountains from our ability to sit quietly in an empty room.

Larry Tyler
Larry Tyler
Awaken the possibilities … then unleash them. After 55 years of successful retail management, I have returned to my passion of writing. I write Poetry, Storytelling, and Short Stories. As a child, I grew up on front porch storytelling. I would sit and listen to my Dad and his brothers tell these great stories that were captivating, and I always wanted to hear more. I wanted to experience the things they talked about. I started writing at a young age and reading everything I could get my hands on. At twelve years old I started a storytelling group and several of my friends became writers or poets. At 16 I hopped box cars and worked the tobacco fields, orange groves, picked cotton, and spent many nights around a campfire listing to life stories. Someone once asked me why I wrote. It consumes an amazing amount of time and I assure you it is not going to make me rich. I write so that my children can touch and feel my words telling of the ones that came before us and the stories they told me. These are the chronicles of our family and even though they come from my childhood memories and are deeply rooted in a child’s remembrance at least they may feel what it was like in the time before them and cherish the things the elders left behind. I am a Columnist & Featured Contributor, BIZCATALYST360 and I have The Writers Café, a group on LinkedIn that features Poets, Writers, Artists, Photographers, and Musicians . On Facebook I have two groups and one page; Dirt Road Storytelling, From Abandoned To Rescue Dogs And Cats, and About Life, Love And Living. As writers, it is true that we honestly do not know what we hold within us until we unleash it. When our words inspire others only then will inspiration return to the writer. I will spend my twilight years in search of the next story, the next poem, and the next image. I will take the time to enjoy my Wife, our Dogs, and Cats, and our amazing new home and I will always find the time to walk down a dirt road I truly hope is that I never have to read another book on Leadership, be on a conference call or see another plan o gram as these were the tool for what I did in life and not about who I am.

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16 CONVERSATIONS

  1. Larry, this is beautiful and so true. Right now, I’m enjoying my morning coffee as sun streams through the windows of our family room. The only sounds are the rhythmic ticking of a clock and the occasional bird song as spring finally starts to show itself. I watch our three cats bask in the sun. No TV. No news. Just this lovely respite. Thank you for sharing this.

  2. We should all have a quiet place to retreat, take a break and reflect, because only this helps us to clarify what is happening around and within us. To put the world on pause in order to question yourself. To clean up the mind of the thousand junk that end up inside every day.
    This allows us to put aside what does not add value to our lives, to dedicate ourselves to the essential that is what is needed for things to be what they are, what gives meaning to what is, all that remains when we have removed the superfluous.
    Even writing is a very useful exercise to listen to one’s life and plan the days to come. The problem is not really what to write or when to write, but to plan some time to think and then make a list of the things we want to remove from our lives and how we can do to remove them. To make room for essential things.

    • Thank you Aldo. You share great insight in your feedback. You always shine a light on our stories and I thank you for your support

  3. Today, more than ever, it is necessary to find the time to isolate ourselves: from real noises, but also from the constant pressures of news and social media. To find ourselves and the calm we need to recover our creativity.
    Generating good ideas and quatity work requires something very rare in modern life: quiet! Recent studies are showing that taking time for sitence restores the nervous system, helps sustain energy, and conditions our minds to be more adaptive and responsive to the complex environments in which so many of us now live. When we’re constantty fixated on what to say next, what to write next, what to tweet next, it’s difficutt to drop into deeper modes of listening and attention And, it’s in those deeper modes of attention that truty novel ideas are found. Even incredibty busy peopte can cuttivate periods of sustained quiet time. It need only some practical ideas. lf you’re abte to close the office door, retreat to a park bench or find another quiet hideaway, it’s possibte to hit reset by engaging in a sitent practice of meditation or reftection. You need not be an outdoors type to ditch the phone and go for a simpte two or three-hour watk in nature. lmmersion in nature can be the ctearest option for improving creative thinking capacities. Turn off your email for several hours or even a fullday, or try “fasting” from news and entertainment. White there may still be plenty of noise around – famity, conversation, city sounds – you can enjoy reaI benefits by resting the parts of your mind associated with unending work obtigations and tracking social media or current events. Even a short retreat can be the most straightforward way to turn toward deeper listening and awaken intuition. The wortd is getting louder. But silence is still accessible: it just takes commitment and creativity to cultivate it.

  4. On what I need to do, I choose a kind of empty room. When I need to plow through 5000 pages worth of case studies I use a quiet room where I’m the only occupant. When I’m putting together requirements, I use a quiet room where people are reading. When I need to be creative, I’m in a room that is not quiet at all.

  5. I just had this conversation today with a young 20 something. We get so used to go go go we forget there is another speed. I don’t know if we fear the quiet and the empty room or if we have become so accustomed to the speed of life we don’t know how to say no to the frenetic pace and quiet our minds and even notice the empty room. I know I need to work on boundaries and non-negotiables.

  6. I am constantly bring up that orange cat Garfield. When it’s dark and stormy outside, I say “Today I feel blah. Do you realize that just like Garfield that cat that I’m solar powered?”

    I find I mention a lot of cartoon characters when I want people to just take a break. I remember mentioned mentioning Spider-man during an Pharm research meeting so the business guys could chill for a while from all of the statistics involved. (It was relevant too because the technology we were talking about could make a spider-man.)

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