Fighting the Quiet

I’m standing in this old kitchen on a Sunday morning, a warm ceramic mug in my hand, and it’s quiet in a way it never used to be. Not just lake-quiet, the loon-call-and-lapping-water kind of quiet we chose on purpose. This is a different quiet. No feet pounding up and down the stairs. No arguing over the bathroom. No music leaking under a closed door. No car creeping out of the driveway after midnight that I was secretly listening for. No slammed doors, no messes left behind to clean up. No bacon and pancakes filling the house on a Sunday before church, a tradition that just … stopped, without anyone announcing it was the last time. We’re not running out of laundry detergent or paper towels anymore. The fridge isn’t mysteriously emptying itself a day after I filled it.

Racing Toward Empty

I remember thinking, more than once, in the middle of some 6 a.m. school-bus scramble: I cannot wait until the kids are grown and gone so I can sleep in. Hundreds of those mornings. Rehearsals, band practices, ball games I had to pretend to want to attend, birthday parties, Scout campouts, doctor’s appointments, teacher conferences, and a thousand other obligations that made us busier than we ever imagined we’d become. With triplets it was three trikes, then three bigger bikes, then bigger ones still: sports gear, camping gear, gadgets, endless toys, an avalanche of stuff that kept us pleasantly broke for about two decades. Then it was college, times three. Enough tuition to run a small country.

Proud and Lonely

The dream, they tell you, is to successfully launch your kids: get them educated, watch them land jobs, watch them fly. And it worked. They’re grown, and thriving, and that’s supposed to feel like nothing but success. So why does it come with an ache nobody warned me about? Is it possible to be proud and lonely in the same breath?

This Special Week

We’ve been becoming empty-nesters for years now: when they got their driver’s licenses, more so when they left for college, less so when they came back for Covid, then back to college, and now, in their first year of real jobs. They no longer spend the summer with us here in the Adirondacks. A normal summer used to be quiet in the mornings because 20-somethings seem to sleep till noon, and then wonderfully loud the rest of the day: boating, friends piling in, hiking, and parties till 3 AM. Until this week, this was our first summer without all that. I’ve missed the noise, and the connection. The kids had to earn their vacation time, and couldn’t get here until this special week. I cleared my calendar so I could just be here with them. But the moment Labor Day passes, that eerie quiet comes back, and it arrives with mixed blessings.

Missing Lake Life

The empty nest, it turns out, doesn’t happen once. It happens in stages, and each one catches you a little off guard. All summer we’ve visited friends on the lake and watched their kids run the docks, do watersports, living the full lake-life we used to have every single summer for 24 years. It makes me miss it. But I’ll take what I can get, and this week is a gift.

The Comfort Trap

Nobody ever sat me down and told me the math: have kids in your late 20s, and you’ll likely see grandkids by your 50s, maybe even great-grandkids eventually, if you’re lucky and healthy. I had my own plans, which were to build a business and worry about kids later. I had our kids at 47. Which means, if I want to meet grandchildren, I have to stay around for it, and there aren’t any prospects on the horizon yet. If it happens, it’ll be a blessing that fills our lives with a whole new kind of joy. But I can’t sit around waiting for it. There are no guarantees. The only responsible move is to stay engaged, stay useful, stay moving, starting now.

Watching Others Fade

I watched my father sell his business, retire, and get bored within a year. He started little projects just to feel busy, but he told me, more than once, that he wished he’d never sold, because nothing since had made him feel as engaged as running that company had. I’ve watched friends retire, get bored, and die. Not metaphorically. Actually die, sooner than they should have, not long after the gold watch and the goodbye cake. 

As long as I have my health, I don’t intend to retire. I’ll stay active and involved on my own terms, surrounding myself with great people who can carry things forward when I eventually step back. That’s part of why I’ve told my team I want to personally focus more on the fun stuff: the trips with collectors and painters, the retreats with other artists, hosting live and online events, while letting others own the harder problems, stepping in only when they need me. After all, I’ve done that stuff for 42 years.

Refusing to Sit

The one thing none of us can afford to become is sedentary. A friend of mine recently left her husband because of his addiction to sitting in front of the news, refusing to get up and do anything anymore. Another friend has let his weight climb so high he now relies on airport wheelchairs, because the walk through the terminal is too much work. Why does someone let it get that far? Why not fight for the walk, fight for the health, fight to stay strong, fight to stay a manageable weight? It’s as if some people quietly give up the moment nobody’s depending on them to show up anymore.

Strength in Motion

I keep coming back to a verse: “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31). Even scripture ties strength to motion, to running, to walking, not to sitting still. 

Longevity researchers say almost the same thing in secular terms: sitting has been called “the new smoking,” and muscle disuse is one of the fastest paths to decline. But the piece I find most convincing isn’t the warning. It’s the model. On Okinawa, one of the world’s five “Blue Zones” for longevity, elders don’t retire into stillness. They live by a concept called ikigai, roughly “the reason you get up in the morning,” and researchers who study the region note that older Okinawans can articulate exactly what that reason is, well into their hundreds. They stay bound to each other through lifelong social circles called moai, they keep gardens deep into old age, they continue to farm with physical labor, and their traditional way of sitting on floor mats forces them to get up and down off the ground dozens of times a day, which alone builds the strength and balance to prevent the falls that end so many Western lives early. Purpose isn’t a nice-to-have there. It’s infrastructure.

A Hard Conversation

Last week I took a family member aside, gently, and said, “I’m concerned about you. Can I share what I’m seeing?” I told him I’d noticed him slowing down cognitively, wandering without much aim, because he no longer has a clear purpose pulling him forward, and that if it continues, I don’t think he’ll be around much longer. I encouraged him to find a project that would re-engage his brain and his body, and to stop spending his waking hours in front of a television or behind a lawn mower. It wasn’t an easy conversation. It was a necessary one.

Filling the Quiet

So here’s what I’ve actually been doing with the silence, instead of just noticing it.

Travel. I started saying yes to trips I’d have talked myself out of a few years ago … not to run from the quiet, but to fill it with new light, new language, new perspectives. The more uncomfortable I am, the more I want to challenge myself to go.

Social. The friendships that carried us through the parenting years were mostly built around our kids’ schedules, and when that scaffolding disappears, you have to build friendship on purpose instead of by accident. My retreats, conventions, and trips keep me deeply engaged socially, as does staying active with the neighborhood. This year I taught painting to kids and adults on the lake, which challenged me in new ways and deepened my relationships.

Hobbies. I’ve circled back to things I loved before life got loud … more painting, trying new mediums, playing with sculpture, frame-making, and anything that seems interesting.Work. Instead of pulling back from purpose, I leaned into it harder, doing more of what energizes me and handing off what doesn’t. I’m forcing myself to innovate, reinvent, and try new things. And by surrounding myself with 30- and 40-year-olds, I have to be relevant to gain their respect. I’m creating and hosting more events to push myself.Movement. Exercise is critical. Instead of telling myself “It’s too heavy,” I force myself to lift, to exercise, to keep moving.

Life isn’t about giving up because you’ve worked a full life. In my opinion, work is just one of many more chapters. I cannot imagine meeting my Maker and hearing the question “What did you do with your last couple of decades?” only to answer with, “I watched TV and spent more time on social media.”\

Be deliberate. Challenge yourself. Push hard. Fight to stay relevant and strong.

If your house is quieter now, what are you going to fill it with? And is it something you chose, or something you’re just letting happen to you?

Eric Rhoads