“Within us there is a silence as vast as the universe.” Meister Eckhart
There’s a quiet that settles in the shop before anything properly wakes. Not silence exactly, more the soft gaps between familiar noises. The click of the main switch near the door. The small hum that rolls through the sockets as they come alive one by one. The tap of the keyboard while the till thinks about loading. Outside, the fruit-and-veg stall starts dragging crates across the car park, each scrape travelling further than seems reasonable at this hour. A bus exhales at the stop near the crossing. None of it is loud, but all of it arrives slowly enough that you can hear each part for what it is.
I never noticed mornings like this when I worked nights. Back then my days began with the beep-beep of reversing lorries, the clatter of cages skating across concrete, the hollow rattle of pallet trucks pushed harder than they were designed to go. Quiet didn’t soothe you in a place like that. Quiet usually meant something was stuck, someone was late, or a delivery had gone wrong. Even on breaks, the noise of the shift clung to you.
Here it means the opposite.
Before opening, the shop gathers itself. That’s when small things stand out: an earring left on the jewellery stand, a scarf resting over a rail where someone hesitated and put it back, a paperback tucked into the wrong shelf as if it wandered there on its own. Yesterday, or maybe the day before, someone left a tiny silver stud that keeps catching the morning light. Little traces of the day that linger quietly until someone notices them again.
There’s another kind of quiet in the office at the back, a small square room that feels separate yet still wired into the rhythm outside. It’s never silent. The fruit man calls out his morning deals through the open door. Someone on the shop floor drops a hanger. A rail gives its familiar metallic rattle when someone drags it a little too far. But the noise softens here. It stops demanding, slips into the background, and leaves a bit of space to breathe.
The office isn’t much to look at: an uneven desk, a chair that complains if you sit down too quickly, a stack of forms I keep meaning to sort properly. Sometimes a jumper ends up in here, something someone said they would come back for later and never did. A navy one has been sitting on the edge of the desk for weeks now. Still, the room is a kind of refuge. A place to eat, think, avoid thinking, or simply wait for the day to come back into focus. Through the thin wall I can hear the day ticking along without me. Two volunteers discussing where the bric should go. A regular arriving with a story she’s been saving. The till drawer sliding open when someone buys something oddly specific, like a frog-shaped mug or a coat too warm for the season.
This kind of quiet isn’t about silence.
It’s the sound of the day stepping back a little.
The last quiet arrives after locking up, when the shop finally lets go of the hours that came before it. Outside, the street slows into a softer shuffle. The fruit stall packs what’s left of the day into crates. A couple of late voices drift across the car park before fading. Inside, the rails stop their small metal complaints. Clothes settle. The air loses its urgency. Even the hazard-taped patch of laminate near the till gives its faint click under my shoes in a way it never does when the room is full of people.
This quiet feels earned.
Not an empty quiet, but a settling one. The kind that comes when the room stops performing. In the evening stillness, things I walked past all day return: a child’s jacket folded on the toy section, a mug tucked among the electricals because someone changed their mind, a paperback resting open as though the shop itself had been reading and forgot where it left off. Small reminders that the day held more than transactions, more than noise, more than whatever I thought I was paying attention to.
It took me years to trust this kind of quiet. In the warehouse, silence was a warning. Even on days off I would brace without realising, waiting for something to go wrong. Quiet felt like a breath being held.
Now it lands differently.
When the noise falls away, I can hear the small adjustments the day has made. The way my shoulders drop once the door is locked. The way my breathing steadies when nobody needs anything. The way the shop seems to relax after being held open for hours. There isn’t a lesson in it. Just the sense that the room has remembered itself and I am catching up.
In that setting, I can look at the day without being dragged back into it. What mattered. What didn’t. What needs carrying forward and what can stay behind for tomorrow. Quiet has its own way of telling the truth. Not loudly, not clearly. Just enough that you notice it when you finally stop rushing past yourself.
It isn’t profound.
It’s simply honest.
Most days, that feels like enough to work with.
“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” W. B. Yeats
What do you learn when you finally stop rushing past yourself?
See Also Charity Shop Meditations #1 What I Learned From Broken Things
Charity Shop Meditations #2 How The Day Answers Back
Notes
Header photo by Milan De Clercq on Unsplash