The Universe Speaks, But We Drown It Out

 

It’s said that the world is in constant communication.
With us.

 

The chatter of strangers, the hum of traffic, the daily conversations, the hellos and goodbyes exchanged with old faces and new ones, the footsteps of the person walking beside us in what we assume is just another alley.

 

It’s said, none of it is random.

It is said that within this constant communication, the universe is always trying to tell us something we are meant to hear.
Yet, we fail to.

 

We add layers of noise that keep us from listening.
Sometimes, it’s external—the music blasting in our ears, the endless scrolling, the conversations filling every quiet moment.
Other times, it’s internal—the weight of our thoughts, our worries, our disappointments. Even our ambitions, dreams, and joys.

 

But when we ignore it for too long, the universe finds ways to make us listen.

 

And when all else fails, it strips everything away—leaving us with nothing but silence.

 

And So, We Are Left With Solitude

 

Solitude and I have met many times.
But never on my terms.

 

Not once have I chosen to be alone. It has always been imposed upon me.

As if the universe deliberately pulls me into a space where I can no longer escape what I need to hear.

 

At first, I resist. The absence of external noise doesn’t bring peace, it only makes the internal noise louder.
Or rather, it makes the internal noise hearable.

 

Thoughts clash, worries spiral, and silence turns into an unbearable hum.

 

In my latest solitude, somewhere in the clearing of that noise, a voice reached me.
Takako.
She had been waiting ever since she called to me, when I first bought Days at The Morisaki Bookshop (in the very midst of distraction).
A voice I had overlooked.

 

And just like every solitude before it, this one stripped away the external noise, even if my internal noise remained.

But at least the absence of the external could make me finally hear her.

 

Takako was more than just a name on a page.
She became a companion, sharing with me the experience of solitude.

 

And So, We’re Forced to Stop and Feel

 

When we just exist, we react.
We wake up, we move, we respond.
Conversations, routines, obligations—we are so caught up in what’s happening around us that we barely pause to check in with ourselves.

• How do we truly feel about a certain situation?
• Why have we been more restless lately?
• What’s behind those sudden bursts of irritation, exhaustion, or silence?

 

Solitude, through the silence it brings, has a way of forcing those questions upon us.
It removes the background noise, the distractions, the endless movement.
It turns a silence that appears empty at first into something far louder than we realize.

 

Something that stirs everything we’ve pushed aside.

 

A thought we weren’t ready to face.
A feeling we convinced ourselves we didn’t have time for.
And emotions we were too terrified to feel—so we buried them.

 

But when the noise is gone, when we are stopped to feel, we finally hear what was always there.

 

Takako, too, was forced to feel.

 

Thrown into solitude by heartbreak, she did what so many of us do—she shut down.
In the bookshop, where time moved differently, she spent her first few weeks trapped inside herself, not yet ready to engage with the silence.

 

“I slept, ate, read, and slept again,” she recalled.

But solitude is not passive.
It doesn’t just remove distractions.
It forces emotions out of hiding.

 

And So, We Begin to Listen

 

At first, emotions come as discomfort.
As restlessness, tension, unease.

 

They don’t arrive with clarity. They don’t introduce themselves with explanations.
They just press—tugging at something we haven’t yet acknowledged.

 

But as we sit with them, they begin to take shape.
Not as vague feelings, but as messages guiding us toward what we’ve ignored, what we need, what we can no longer suppress.

 

Apparently, solitude gives emotions a space the busyness of the world never does.
In that space, emotions don’t just exist to be felt.
They start to speak.
They tell us something.

 

Through Envy, we hear what we secretly crave—the things we long for but have not yet allowed ourselves to pursue.
“I envied people who had something they loved so much they devoted their whole lives to it.”
Takako, too, began to wonder if she had ever desired anything enough to claim it as her own.

 

Through Anger, we hear what no longer serves us—what is sacred, what must be protected, and what must never be tolerated.
Takako had been angry, but she never let herself claim it. It wasn’t until she sat in that silence that she understood what she had lost—and that she was allowed to feel it.

 

Through Sadness, we hear what we love, what we care about—so we can finally let go, heal, and make room for what comes next.
It wasn’t until Takako let herself feel the sadness fully that she could move beyond it.

 

Through Fear, we hear the most vulnerable within us—and the very thing that pushes us forward, demanding courage where hesitation once lived.
Takako had feared being alone, but it was in solitude that she began to understand herself differently.

 

Through Guilt, we hear what needs realignment with our values.
Through Loneliness, we hear our true selves beneath all the noise.
Through Jealousy, we hear what stirs our souls, what we long for, and what we have yet to claim as our own.

 

Emotions were messages, waiting all along for ‘silence’ to be heard.
A silence we once dismissed as empty—revealing that not everything we overlook is without meaning.

 

And So, We See the Noise for What It Is—And Let It Go

 

Life knows how to seduce us.
It waves its extravagance before us—grand places, dazzling nights, the illusion of endless excitement. The things that shine, that impress, that make us feel as though we are stepping into something larger than life itself.

 

We are told that luxury means success, that grandeur means fulfillment.
And so, we fall for it.
We chase the experiences that feel expensive, exclusive, unattainable.
We believe that if something is lavish—dressed in excess, wrapped in the language of wealth or power—then it must be special.

 

And maybe, for some, it is.
But sometimes, ‘fancy’ is just noise.

 

I know it because I witnessed it—with my own eyes.
I saw, in silence, how it can be nothing more than a desperate attempt to dazzle, to distract, to convince.
To maliciously deceive.

 

Some people—some parts of life—can’t stand the fact that joy can be found in simplicity.
So, they perform.
They manufacture an illusion so loud, so grand, so extravagant, that it hopes you never stop to question it—
Because if you do, you might see how hollow it really is.

 

But when solitude came, when I slowed down, when I paused—I saw through it.

 

And I saw the lavish in the things I was made to overlook.
In the quiet mornings in the garden.
In coffee with my mother, served in a cup with a broken saucer.
In the t-shirts I’ve worn since my university days—the ones still in good shape, reflecting my mother’s care for the things I owned.

 

The things I once appreciated, but was force-fed materialism to distract me from.

 

Takako, too, had been trapped in an illusion.
She once believed love was security—that as long as she had her relationship, life was whole.
She thought she knew what fulfillment looked like.

 

But when that illusion shattered—when she was left alone with nothing but herself—she realized how much she had ignored.
She had never paused to ask what she truly wanted.
Never slowed down enough to see beauty beyond the roles she played—or was made to play.

 

She had been fed the idea that a love that looks perfect must be enough.

 

It took solitude for both of us to see clearly.

 

At first, the bookshop was nothing more than a place she had to endure.
A shelter, a stopgap, a space she never would have chosen for herself.
To her, it was just a room filled with books—nothing more, nothing less.

 

But solitude has a way of shifting our vision.

 

The longer she stayed, the more she began to notice.
The way books breathed life into the space—not just as objects, but as companions waiting to be discovered.
The quiet rhythm of the bookshop—the regulars who wandered in, the way they moved between shelves, the subtle intimacy of their presence as they traced familiar titles with their fingers.

 

And that’s when she slowed down.
When she paused, she saw through it.

 

A world within a world—a place that had always been full of life, even when she couldn’t see it.

 

Because sometimes, it’s the quiet things, the steady things, the seemingly ordinary things that hold the most depth.

 

And when we begin to see that, we also begin to ask:

 

What else have we misunderstood?
What if the happiness we were chasing wasn’t truly ours?

 

And So, We Quit Chasing What Wasn’t Ours

 

In the noise of daily life, we don’t always stop to ask ourselves why we want the things we want.
We wake up each morning, pushing toward the next milestone, the next achievement, the next proof that we are doing something right.

 

But right by whose standards?

 

Success is defined for us before we even know how to define it for ourselves.
We are taught that happiness has a shape, a structure, a price tag.
That it is wealth, accomplishment, admiration.
That it is the job title, the luxury, the proof that we are not behind.

 

And so, we chase.
We conform—without even realizing that we’re chasing a noise.

 

And in that chase, we convince ourselves that fulfillment will come once we get there.

 

But in the silence, something shifts.

 

When the noise of external validation fades, when the world stops dictating what should matter, we begin to notice the burdens we never questioned.

 

And we realize how heavy they are.

 

Satoru Had Never Carried That Weight.
Takako’s uncle was nothing like the people she had known before.

 

He had no hunger for status or wealth.
No ambition for more than what he had.
No concern for whether the world thought his life was meaningful.

 

He simply loved books—and so, he built his life around them.

 

Takako couldn’t understand it at first.

 

How could someone choose such a small, simple existence in a world that constantly tells us to chase more?

 

She had spent years pushing forward, measuring success the way society had taught her to measure it.
She had been conditioned to believe that happiness just beyond the next step, that fulfillment came from gaining more, from proving something.

 

But Satoru never needed to prove anything.
He lived by a different rhythm—one of his own making.

And the longer Takako spent in the bookshop, the more she saw something in him that she had never truly had—contentment.

 

A life built not for admiration, not for validation, not for approval.
But simply because he loved the life he was living.

 

Satoru’s life was not small—it was simply free from the weight of expectation.

 

And in that space of stillness, in the absence of chasing, something happens.

 

We begin to notice.

 

What actually moves us.
What Actually Brings us Peace
What we actually enjoy.

 

And So, We Redefine What Matters

 

We mistake momentum for purpose.
We assume that just because we’re moving toward something, it must be right.
We chase, not because we truly crave what’s ahead, but because it’s all we’ve known.

 

But silence disrupts that.

 

When the noise is stripped away, when the distractions fell apart, when I was left with nothing but my self—I began to notice what actually resonates.

 

Before that solitude, I had chased things in the way I was told they should be chased.

 

I had listened when I was told that for something to matter, it had to be big.
That it had to impress. That it had to follow the rules of what people expected.

 

And so, I tried.

 

I built, I invested, I followed the way things were “supposed” to be done.

 

And in the process, I lost the joy of it.

 

But then, in the quiet, I saw it differently.

 

I realized that some things don’t have to be grand to be meaningful.
That fulfillment isn’t in making something “big” enough for people to approve of.

 

That sometimes, joy is found in the process itself.

 

Like playing a melody, even if my hands are still learning.
Like sketching a line, even if I’m still figuring out the strokes.
Like writing—not to be seen, not to impress, but simply to feel at home in my own words.

 

Things I once thought had to be perfected, had to be performed, had to be made worthy of attention—
Now I just enjoy them.

 

At my own pace.

 

Not everything we love has to be a performance.
And not everything worth doing needs an audience.

 

Takako, for the first time, started noticing what she truly enjoyed.

 

Books had always been there—but she had never truly engaged with them.

 

At first, they were just part of the bookshop, background noise to her forced solitude. But as time passed, she found herself drawn into them—not as a distraction, but as something more.

 

A quiet kind of companionship.
A connection to something meaningful.
A way of being present that she had never slowed down enough to experience before.

 

And it wasn’t just books.

 

She started enjoying the stillness.

 

The way tea warmed her hands on a slow afternoon.
The way people moved through the bookshop, their fingertips brushing against pages, their quiet presence filling the space.
The way she no longer felt the need to escape the moment.

 

And with each passing day, she realized something profound.

 

She didn’t actually need the life she had before.

 

The chase, the validation, the relentless forward motion.

 

Because here, in this tiny bookshop, in this life she never would have chosen, she had found something she never knew she was missing.

 

She had found peace.

 

A peace that once known, can’t be unknown
And no matter where life takes you after that—you are not the same.

 

And So, We Can’t Go Back to Who We Were

 

Once we see clearly, we cannot go back to blindness.
Once we recognize what weighed us down, we cannot carry it the same way again.
Once we listen—truly listen— we cannot pretend we haven’t heard.

 

Awakening is irreversible.

 

And that’s why leaving doesn’t mean returning.

 

In my silence, I heard through it all, the between the lines, the beneath the comfort, the illusion and the cost I was fooled to pay

 

I had to seek differently.

 

And so, I did.

 

I started looking for meaning in places I never would have before.
I started choosing differently, not to be liked, but to be whole.
I started building something real—without the need for anyone else’s approval.

 

Because the moment you truly listen, something shifts.

 

And no matter where life takes you after that—you are not the same.

 

Takako wasn’t the same person.

 

When she first arrived, she was lost. Disoriented by heartbreak, numb from the life she had left behind. She saw the bookshop as nothing more than a pause—a temporary exile before returning to the real world.

 

Slowly, without realizing it, she had become someone different.

 

She had learned how to be still.
She had learned how to feel.
She had learned how to notice.

 

And when the time came to leave, she didn’t step back into her old life as if nothing had happened.

 

Because too much had happened.

 

She had seen too much.
She had felt too much.
She had unlearned too much to pick up the same burdens again.

 

She wasn’t running toward the same things anymore—because she had stopped chasing what was never hers to begin with.

 

And so, she reentered life not as the person who had first walked into the bookshop, but as someone who had listened.

 

And listening changes everything.

 

And So, We Walk Forward

 

We walk forward
not because we are searching,
not because we are empty,
not because we need to prove anything.

 

We walk forward because we have seen.

 

Because once the illusion fades, once the noise is stripped away,
there is no going back.

 

We no longer chase what was never ours.
We no longer hold what was never meant to stay.

 

We no longer move for the sake of movement.

 

We move because we have listened.
We move because we now know.

 

And once we know, we choose differently.

 

When Takako moved forward

 

She turned back one last time, looking at her uncle—the bookshop behind him, the world she had once been trapped in now quiet in the distance.

 

“My uncle stood in front of the bookshop, as he always did, as if nothing had changed.
I had changed. But he remained the same, in the place where I had found myself, where I had learned to listen.”

 

She had found meaning there. But she was no longer meant to stay.

 

And so, she left—not as the person who had first arrived, but as someone who had seen.

 

Maybe that’s what walking forward really is.

 

Not running.
Not searching.
Not needing to fill a void.

 

But carrying what we’ve learned, knowing we can never unsee it.

 

And choosing—not out of fear, not out of habit, but because we finally understand where we are meant to go.