Are You Shouting Into or Listening to the Wind?

The wind was coming hard out of the south, and I was running straight into it. It caught in my shirt, filled my ears, and made the southbound stretch toward that “Hilbert’s Hotel” stop sign feel longer than it already was. I was breathing hard even though I was moving at an unremarkable pace. I had stopped checking my watch by then. The numbers weren’t kind.

A few days earlier, I had finally admitted I was basically starting over with my running capacity. It wasn’t a dramatic, resolution-fueled morning. It was accepting that I wasn’t running like I used to. I was heavier. A lot heavier. I was slower and out of rhythm. The man who used to consistently pace at 8:30 miles on a 20-mile run at 45 years old now, just two years later, calls it a win to get 5 miles at an 11-minute-per-mile pace.

That morning, though, felt different. I stopped running. I didn’t (necessarily) need to catch my breath. I just wanted to listen. The wind was loud in my ears, rushing through the trees that are starting to lose their leaves. It was whistling through a broken section of vinyl fence to my left, and tugging at the running pack I wore. I stood still on the shoulder of the road, alone in the dark at 5:18 a.m., and just listened.

I wasn’t listening for anything in particular. Not danger. Not a voice. Not even a thought. I just listened, and the wind didn’t answer.

That might sound disappointing, but it wasn’t.

Most of the time, when I run alone, my mind easily fills the silence with stories. The sound of a dog in the distance became a threat. A rustling bush meant someone was following me. Sometimes I imagined someone crying for help, or the echo of footsteps behind me that weren’t there. My brain wanted to fill the space, to assign meaning to every sound. Our brains are remarkable that way.

But this time, I didn’t invent anything. I didn’t rehearse a speech or solve a problem or try to outrun a voice in my head. I just stood there and let the wind be what it was: loud, somewhat directionless, and cold.

That was the shift.

I’ve spent a lot of my life shouting into the wind, hoping to be heard. I don’t mean yelling, exactly. I mean striving. Explaining. Proving. Whether it was work, fatherhood, marriage, faith, or friendship, I’ve often held the belief that if I just did more, said it right, or showed up harder, I’d finally earn peace. That I’d finally be known in the way I wanted to be known.

And when it didn’t come, I just pushed harder.

But there’s a different kind of strength I’m starting to notice now. It doesn’t look like control or confidence. It looks like listening. Like not needing to fill the silence. Like standing in the dark with the cold wind rushing past and knowing I don’t have to explain anything to anyone, not even to myself.

I’m not saying the old beliefs were useless. The drive to prove myself served me well for a long time. It built businesses. It kept me moving forward when it would’ve been easier to collapse. It helped me survive seasons I didn’t have words to describe. But I’m not in those seasons anymore.

The belief that I have to earn stillness is one I’m slowly learning to let go.

I don’t have the same legs I used to. My lungs aren’t as efficient. My body doesn’t snap back like it once did. But I’m not angry about that. At least, not today. I’m learning to thank this slower, heavier body for carrying me back to something I forgot how to hold.

Presence.

There’s no more to the story standing there on the side of the road in the dark with my headlamp pointed toward nothing. There’s no insight that I hope will trend. No lesson to extract and sell. But it mattered to me precisely because I didn’t fill it with anything.

I just stood there and listened, trusting that it was enough just to be.

And that is enough.