What do you love now, that you hated when you were younger?
Silence is my answer – and that’s the whole point.
The question that stopped me
The question was simple enough:
“What do you love now, that you hated when you were younger?”
My honest reply? Silence.
Not a clever punchline, not a neat life lesson. Just the very thing I used to resist: quiet, stillness, the gaps in the noise. When I was younger, silence felt uncomfortable, even threatening. If things were quiet, it meant something was wrong, or I should be doing more, talking more, proving more. I filled every space with distraction, background sound, or busyness – anything to avoid sitting with myself.
Now, I love what I used to run from.
Learning to be at peace with quiet
Silence, for me, has become a kind of peace – not the dramatic, cinematic kind, but the everyday version that sneaks in between tasks. It’s the moment before I pick up my phone. The pause before I react. The stillness in my breathing when I go for a walk and finally stop narrating everything in my head.
I used to think peace meant finishing everything on the to‑do list, fixing every problem, or keeping everyone happy. It sounded like a distant destination: “When life calms down, then I’ll feel peaceful.” What I’ve come to realise is that peace is often found in tiny pockets of silence, within a life that’s still busy, imperfect and noisy.
It’s not that my world has gone quiet – it hasn’t. I create content, share recipes, and live online. But the inner demand to fill every second with sound has softened. I no longer panic when there’s nothing playing in the background or nobody speaking. I let the quiet be there.
Mindfulness as an old enemy turned friend
If silence was the thing I avoided, mindfulness was the word I rolled my eyes at.
Years ago, mindfulness sounded to me like a fad – a buzzword that belonged on wellness posters and meditation apps, but not in “real life”. I didn’t want to sit still and watch my thoughts; I wanted to outrun them. Staying busy felt safer than paying attention.
The shift didn’t happen overnight. It came in small moments: noticing my breath when I was anxious, paying attention to how my body felt after certain meals, catching myself before I spiralled into an automatic reaction. Those little pauses were my first clumsy attempts at mindfulness.
Now, mindfulness isn’t about performing calmness or being perfectly serene. It’s about noticing. Noticing that I’m overwhelmed. Noticing that I’m tired. Noticing that I’m content, even if nothing “big” is happening. It’s being present enough to taste my food instead of inhaling it, and aware enough to enjoy a quiet room instead of racing to fill it.
Mindfulness invited me to step into the silence I used to hate – and realise it wasn’t empty after all.
Silence in a noisy, online life
There’s an irony here: I live and work in spaces that thrive on noise – feeds, notifications, comments, videos, posts. The online world is designed to be loud, fast and constant. In that environment, silence can feel like absence or failure: if we’re not posting, are we falling behind? If we’re not talking, are we being left out?
But silence can be a choice, not a gap.
Choosing not to respond immediately. Choosing not to share every thought. Choosing not to comment on everything. Choosing a mindful break before creating or consuming more.
In my own routine, that looks like:
• Sitting quietly with my morning drink before I film anything.
• Taking a silent walk without headphones, just listening to the world as it is.
• Allowing myself a few breaths between tasks, instead of leaping straight into the next thing.
These aren’t dramatic lifestyle changes; they’re tiny acts of resistance against the pressure to be “on” all the time. They’re my way of saying: I can live a visible life and still honour invisible moments.
The gift of not answering
So when I read the question, “What do you love now, that you hated when you were younger?”, my answer being silence felt strangely right.
Silence is no longer the enemy. It’s the space where I feel most at peace, the doorway into mindfulness, and the reminder that I don’t have to narrate or justify every part of my life. Sometimes not having a clever story is the story.
Perhaps the real shift isn’t that I now “love” silence in the same way I love my favourite foods or places. It’s that I’m no longer afraid of it. I can sit in it. I can let it hold me. I can trust it.
And in a world that constantly asks us to explain, perform and produce, choosing silence as an answer might be the most mindful response of all.
LCChaosandhome 