Question of the Day: What is something you once hated, but now crave?

December 6, 2025

Silence and I used to have a terrible relationship. I treated it the way a lot of teenagers treat vegetables. Suspiciously. Dramatically. As if five minutes without background noise might somehow trigger an existential crisis.

Growing up, silence made me uncomfortable. It felt like being stuck in an empty room where the walls were waiting for me to think something profound, and all I could think was that the room could really use a TV. Any TV. Any noise. Anything to keep me from hearing the parts of myself I did not know how to sit with yet.

Doing homework? Needed noise.

Reading? Needed noise.

Late-night nothing-in-particular? Definitely needed noise.

Silence was not peaceful to me. It was pressure. If things were quiet, it meant something was wrong or about to be wrong, or I was supposed to be achieving at a level I could not reach. Silence felt like judgment. So I drowned it out.

And then somewhere along the way, without fanfare or fireworks, silence went from something I avoided to something I crave like oxygen. I do not even know when the change happened. It just did. One day the TV was on, and it felt like too much. One day the early morning was quiet, and it felt like a gift.

Now silence is one of my favorite parts of the day. Especially before dawn. When the house is still. When the kids are asleep. When the coffee is hot and the world has not yet asked anything of me. Silence no longer feels like pressure. It feels like permission. A moment to breathe without performing. A moment to think without interruption. A moment to exist without background commentary.

The funniest part is that the silence itself has not changed. I have. Silence is the same plain, unadorned thing it has always been. What shifted was my capacity to appreciate it. Or maybe my exhaustion from everything else finally created enough contrast for silence to feel like relief instead of discomfort.

Silence is where I sort myself out now. Where I notice how I am really doing. Where I let my thoughts slow down long enough to become something other than noise. I used to run from it. Now I guard it with the same seriousness my kids guard the last fruit snack in the box.

There is something strangely satisfying about craving the very thing you used to fear. Maybe that is part of getting older. Or wiser. Or just more tired. Maybe craving silence is one of the universe’s gentlest ways of telling you that you are becoming someone new.

So yes, silence is my answer. The thing I once hated but now actively seek like a missing ingredient in my day. And if you had told my younger self that one day I would sit quietly on purpose, not as punishment but as pleasure, I would have laughed.

But here we are. And honestly, I am grateful for the shift. Because sometimes silence says more than words ever could.

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💬 Your Turn

So… what is something you once hated, but now crave?

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