← Listen To Sleep - Quiet Bedtime Stories & Meditations
Listen To Sleep - Quiet Bedtime Stories & Meditations
The Meeting That Never Was - A Soothing Tale of Self-Discovery and Peace
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- [00:01]
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Hey, it's Eric. Before we begin tonight's episode, just a quick reminder. You're about to hear a few ads that help to support Listen to Sleep. If you'd rather drift off without them, you can join Listen to Sleep plus and get every episode ad free plus bonus stories and meditations. Just go to ListenToSleep.com and click on Support to learn more. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.
- [00:49]
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- [01:24]
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Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend.
- [01:32]
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Are you a fantasy reader looking to cure your book hangover? Then welcome, welcome, welcome to the Fantasy Fangirls podcast. I'm Lexi, older sister and fantasy lore nerd. And I'm Nicole, younger sister and romantic at heart, and we love exploring these stories, worlds and characters well beyond the last page. Fantasy Fangirls is not your typical book. Deep Dive Podcast. When we say deep dive, we mean deep dive, where every episode covers a stretch of chapters and is structured with five segments to easily follow along. We are currently deep diving Quicksilver by Callie Hart in the lead up to its highly anticipated sequel, Brimstone. We're so excited. We hope you join us as we travel through the Quicksilver to dive deep into literary and character analysis, theories, lore, themes, and so much more.
- [02:15]
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ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com hey friends, it's Eric. Welcome to another relaxing episode of Listen to Sleep. We are deep into autumn now, here on the mountain. It's a season that felt heavy for me for most of my life, and for the last few years I've actually really been enjoying autumn. But earlier this week I found myself sitting with a feeling that has long been synonymous with this season for me. Disappointment. Nothing too dramatic, just the ordinary kind that shows up when something you are looking forward to falls through. A canceled appointment, an empty square on the calendar where anticipation used to be. And as I sat with that feeling, I remembered something we talked about during a recent Zoom gathering in the Cabin, our online community where I teach mindfulness and guide folks on their hero's journey to knowing who they truly are. We were talking about how disappointment, when we're willing to sit with it rather than push it away, can actually be a great teacher. So tonight's story is about the lessons of disappointment. We'll follow Thomas as he boards a train to a canceled meeting and finds himself walking through a park that exists slightly outside of time. It's a gentle, dreamy journey through disappointment to discover the peace of being enough. And before we begin tonight's story, I want to share something with you. Creating Listen to Sleep is truly my life's work, and your support means everything. If these episodes help you find peace at the end of your day, I'd be so grateful if you'd consider joining Listen to Sleep plus for less than the cost of a latte each month, you'll get every episode completely ad free with no interruptions. Just my voice and the story. Plus you'll get access to extended readings and longer books that I don't release anywhere else. Your support is what allows me to keep creating new episodes every week and helps this podcast reach others who need it. You can join@listentosleep.com support and there's a link in the show Notes. Let's take a deep breath in and out. Just letting go of the day, feeling the weight of gravity pulling you deep down into the mattress. Another deep breath in and out. Nothing to do. Nowhere to go. No one to be. This is your time. Quiet time. One more deep breath in with me and out. If you get tired while I'm reading to you, that's okay. Just let yourself drift off the meeting that Never Was the train platform was emptier than Thomas had expected for a Tuesday morning. He stood with his leather messenger bag slung across his chest, the weight of it familiar against his ribs. Inside the presentation materials he'd spent three weeks perfecting printed on expensive paper that whispered when touched. The digital display above the tracks counted down seven minutes until the 9:47 to the city, seven minutes until boarding the train to the meeting with Ms. Helson. The appointment that had occupied his thoughts for weeks, growing larger in his imagination until it had become something more than a business meeting. It had become a doorway, a threshold, the moment when everything might finally click into place. His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out. An email notification glowed on the screen. The subject line read simply canceled. Thomas opened it. The message was brief, professional. He read it once, then again. The words remained the same, unchanging, as final, as a door closing. The train announcement echoed across the platform, now arriving, Track two, and the other passengers began gathering their things. But Thomas stood still, the phone growing warm in his hand as he felt something heavy settle in his chest. Disappointment. Old and familiar as a childhood blanket, but far less comforting. He should go home. There was no reason to take the train now. But his feet wouldn't move toward the parking lot. They felt rooted in the concrete, and beneath the disappointment, something else was stirring, a sadness that seemed larger than a canceled meeting, deeper than a lost opportunity. The train doors opened with a pneumatic sigh. Thomas found himself boarding anyway, pulled by something he couldn't name. He found a window seat and settled in as the train lurched into motion. The suburbs began to blur past, houses with tidy yards, shopping centers, the occasional church steeple pointing at the overcast sky. The train car was warm and quiet except for the rhythmic clacking of wheels on rails. The sound had a hypnotic quality, like a heartbeat or a meditation bell, marking time in a language older than words. An elderly woman across the aisle was knitting something blue, her needles clicking in counterpoint to the wheels, creating a gentle rhythm that seemed to slow Thomas's breathing without him trying. The disappointment sat in his stomach like a stone. Beneath it, if he was honest, was a familiar voice, the voice of a child who had learned early that he wasn't quite enough. The memory rose unbidden. He was nine years old, sitting on the front steps of his childhood home on a Saturday morning. He wore his baseball glove, leather still stiff and new, and waited for his father. They were supposed to go to the park, dad had promised, but the phone call had come and dad had driven away, leaving Thomas on those steps with nothing but the weight and a lump in his throat he couldn't swallow. His mother had found him there an hour later, still waiting. It's okay to be sad, she'd said. Disappointment is a hard feeling. Why doesn't he want to play with me? Thomas had asked through tears. Thirty years later, on a train to a canceled meeting. Thomas felt that same question echoing in his chest. The train passed through a tunnel, and for a moment everything went dark except for the reflection of Thomas's face in the window. A grown man carrying a boy's old wound. Then light returned as they emerged, and the landscape had changed. The suburbs were falling away, replaced by the industrial outskirts of the city. And something about the quality of light seemed different, softer, perhaps more golden than the October morning warranted. Central Station approached. Thomas gathered his bag and stood, swaying slightly with the train's deceleration. The platform was crowded, but as Thomas stepped off and let the crowd carry him toward the escalators, he had the strangest sensation. As if he were standing still while the world moved around him, as if time itself had shifted into a different gear, slower and more deliberate. He rode the escalator up towards street level, watching the city appear above him piece by piece. When he emerged into the open air, the city felt both familiar and strange, as if he'd traveled much further than the hour long train ride suggested. The air smelled of coffee and autumn and something else, something indefinable, like the scent of possibility or the particular quality of light that exists only in the space between one thing and another. Thomas began to walk, though he had no destination now. The canceled meeting had left his day suddenly empty, a blank page where there had been careful planning. But instead of anxiety, he began to feel something else, something like curiosity, something like a deep breath before a long exhale. Thomas walked without direction, letting his feet choose the path. The city moved around him with its usual Tuesday rhythm, taxis honking, pedestrians hurrying past with coffee cups, the distant wail of a siren threading through the urban symphony. But the sounds seemed softer somehow, as if wrapped in cotton, and the light had that golden quality that usually only appeared in the late afternoon, not mid morning. He turned a corner and found himself on a street he didn't quite recognize, though he'd walked these blocks before. The buildings seemed older here, their brick facades weathered in a way that suggested centuries rather than decades. Ivy climbed the walls in patterns that looked almost intentional, like writing in a language he'd forgotten how to read. Morrison park appeared before him. The entrance was marked by two stone pillars, their surfaces worn smooth with age. Between them a wrought iron gate stood open, inviting. Beyond it, the park stretched out farther than it should have, given the city blocks he knew surrounded it. Thomas passed through the gate and felt something shift as subtle as a change in air pressure. The city sounds faded to a distant murmur, replaced by the whisper of leaves and the musical trickle of water. The path beneath his feet was packed earth, bordered by flowers that bloomed in colors that were so vivid. Blues deeper than twilight, yellows bright as captured sunlight. The trees were Ancient oaks and maples, their branches creating a canopy that filtered the golden light into scattered coins of brightness on the path. The air smelled of earth and growing things and something else, something like the scent of time itself. Thomas found a bench beside a fountain he'd never seen before. The fountain was circular, made of weathered stone, and the water rose in its center and in a gentle arc before falling back with a sound like quiet laughter. He sat down slowly, letting his messenger bag slide from his shoulder to rest beside him. The disappointment was still there, in his chest, and sitting in this strange, timeless park, he could feel it even more clearly. Not just the surface disappointment of the canceled meeting, but something deeper, something that had been living in him for so long he'd almost forgotten it was there, a sadness that had its own weight and texture, a belief that he was somehow not quite enough. The fountain's water caught the golden light and threw it back in sparkling fragments. Thomas watched the water rise and fall, rise and fall, the rhythm of it matching his breathing without him trying. Around him, the park seemed to breathe, too, leaves rustling in a breeze he couldn't quite feel on his skin, birds calling from branches in melodies that sounded almost like words. An old man was sitting at the other end of the bench. Thomas blinked, startled. He would have sworn the bench was empty a moment ago, but there the man sat as if he'd been there all along. He had wild white hair and a face mapped with wrinkles that suggested a lifetime of both laughter and sorrow. His eyes were remarkably clear, almost luminous in the golden light. The man didn't speak. He simply sat, hands resting on a walking stick, looking out at the fountain with an expression of deep contentment. His presence was calming rather than intrusive, like the presence of the trees or the water. They sat together in silence. Then the old man lifted one hand from his walking stick and gestured toward the path that wound deeper into the park. It was a wordless invitation, the gentle pointing toward something Thomas couldn't yet see. Thomas found himself standing. The old man nodded slightly, then returned his attention to the fountain, settling deeper into his seat as if he'd been sitting there for centuries and might sit there for centuries more. The path called to Thomas. He felt a pull, a curiosity, a sense that something was waiting for him deeper in the park, something he needed to see, somewhere he needed to go. So he picked up his bag and began walking. The path wound between the ancient trees, and with each step the already soft city sounds faded further until they disappeared entirely. There was only the crunch of his footsteps on the packed earth, the whisper of leaves overhead, and the occasional call of a bird. The light grew more golden, more dreamlike. The trees seemed taller, their trunks wider, their branches reaching higher into a sky that had somehow become both closer and more infinite. Time felt different here, more fluid, as if past and present were layered over each other like pages in a book. Thomas walked deeper into the park. The path curved and split, but his feet seemed to know which way to go without his mind having to decide. He was following something now, something he'd been carrying since he was nine years old, sitting on the steps and waiting for someone to come back. Then the trees opened ahead, and Thomas felt his heart beat quicken. The clearing opened before him like a room in a dream. At its center stood a massive oak tree, its trunk so wide that 10 people holding hands couldn't circle it. The bark was silver gray and its branches spread out like the ceiling of a cathedral, each one thick as a smaller tree, reaching toward the sky. Around the base of the oak, the earth was soft with moss, emerald green and inviting, and sitting on that moss, his back against the trunk, was a boy holding a baseball glove. Thomas stopped walking. His heart recognized the child before his eyes did, the way the boy held his shoulders, the particular angle of his head, the hopeful, worried expression on his face. He was looking at himself at nine years old, wearing the clothes he'd worn that Saturday morning three decades ago. The boy didn't look up. He was staring at his glove, turning it over in his hands, waiting. The leather was still stiff and new, catching the golden light. Thomas could almost smell it. That particular scent of new leather brought him back to childhood and a sense of hope that hadn't yet learned how to protect itself. Thomas moved closer, his footsteps soundless on the moss. He sat down beside the boy, his back against the ancient trunk, and for a long moment neither of them spoke, because what was there to say? The boy knew why his father hadn't come. Thomas knew why the boy was still waiting. He's not coming back, the boy said finally, his voice small. Thomas felt the words in his chest. No, not today. It's because I'm not good enough, the boy said, and a tear tracked down his cheek. If I was better, he would have stayed. Thomas wanted to argue, to explain about adult complications and work emergencies and all the reasons that had nothing to do with the boy's worth. But sitting here in this timeless clearing beside this younger version of himself, he understood that explanations wouldn't help. The boy had already decided what it meant, had already picked up the stone of not enough, and carried it forward. Instead, Thomas simply sat with him. Let the boy's sadness be what it was. Let the waiting be what it was. Let the disappointment exist without trying to fix it or explain it away. After a while, the boy faded, not disappearing exactly, but becoming translucent, like morning mist when the sun touches it. And in his place, another version of Thomas appeared. This one was 17, sitting against the same tree, holding a college rejection letter. Thomas watched himself at 17, remembered that particular disappointment, how he'd been so sure that acceptance letter would prove something, would show his father, wherever he was, that Thomas had become someone worth noticing. The rejection had felt like confirmation of what he'd always suspected. Still not quite enough. The teenager faded and another version of Thomas appeared, 25, sitting in an apartment he couldn't quite afford, staring at a phone that wouldn't ring with the job offer he'd been certain would come. Then, 32, holding divorce papers, wondering what was wrong with him that he couldn't make someone stay. Each version of himself appeared and faded like breath on a mirror, each one holding a different disappointment, like a stone, each one interpreting that disappointment the same way. Proof of unworthiness, evidence of not enough. Thomas sat against the ancient oak and watched his life play out in disappointments, each one building on the last until the weight of them seemed impossible to carry. And yet he'd carried them. He was still carrying them. The boy on the steps, the teenager with the rejection letter, the young man with the silent phone, the husband signing papers. They were all still inside him, still waiting, still hoping the next appointment would be the one that finally proved they were enough. Then the clearing became quiet except for the whisper of leaves overhead. Thomas sat alone against the tree, feeling the weight of all those stones, all those disappointments, all those years of trying to prove something that couldn't be proven externally. And slowly, something began to shift. Not the disappointments themselves. They were real. They had happened. They would always be part of his story, but his relationship to them, the meaning he designed to them, the belief that they said something fundamental about him. A single leaf detached from the branches above and spiraled down, landing softly on the moss beside him. Thomas picked it up, turned it over in his hands. It was golden brown, perfect in its imperfection, complete in its letting go. He stood up slowly, the leaf still in his hand, and saw that the path continued on the other side of the clearing, winding deeper into the dreamlike forest. Thomas followed it as the path led him to a place where the trees opened into sky. He stood at the edge of a small clearing, and at its center was a pool of water, so still it looked like polished glass. The surface reflected the sky above, not the overcast October morning he'd left behind, but something else, A sky that held all seasons at once. Thomas approached the pool and knelt at its edge. The water was clear and deep, and as he looked into it, he saw not his reflection but something else entirely. The surface of the water became a calendar, pages turning backward through time. Today, yesterday, last week, last month, years scrolling past like leaves in the wind. He saw himself this morning on the train platform, reading the email with the subject line canceled. But now he could see what he hadn't noticed then, the way his whole body had tensed, the way his breathing had changed, the way some part of him had immediately understood this disappointment as confirmation of an old belief. The water showed him other appointments, other meetings he'd built up in his mind as the ones that would finally prove something. Job interviews, first dates, presentations, pitches. Each one carrying the same invisible weight, the same desperate hope that this would be the moment when everything clicked into place and he could finally feel like enough. He saw the pattern clearly now, how he'd been offering these appointments as proof, as evidence, as bargaining chips with some invisible judge who would finally declare him worthy, each one a chance to earn what he'd been seeking since he was nine years old. Sitting on the steps with his baseball glove. The water rippled and the images shifted. Now he could see this morning's calendar, the empty space where the meeting with Ms. Helson had been. But instead of seeing it as a loss, as a cancellation, he saw it differently. The empty space wasn't absence. It was opening. It was potential. It was the unknown, pure and available, waiting for nothing, requiring nothing, promising nothing. And suddenly Thomas understood every appointment he'd ever made, every meeting he'd built up, as important, every moment he designated as the one that might finally prove his worth. They were all the same. They were all attempts to fill a gap that couldn't be filled from the outside. They were all offerings to a belief that didn't deserve his devotion. The old man from the bench appeared beside him, though Thomas hadn't heard him approach. The man didn't speak, but his presence was like a question, gentle and patient. Are you beginning to see? Thomas looked at the still water, at the empty calendar square floating on its surface. I've been waiting for permission, he said quietly. For proof that I'm allowed to be enough. The old man placed a weathered hand on Thomas's shoulder. The touch was warm, solid real. And in that touch, Thomas felt something released. Not dramatically, not all at once, but like a knot slowly loosening, like a fist unclenching, like a breath, finally fully exhaled. The water rippled again and the calendar disappeared. Now the surface showed only sky, clouds moving in their ancient patterns, indifferent to human stories of worth or unworthiness, the unknown always beginning again, the present moment always available. The truth that nothing external had ever been required. Thomas stood slowly. The old man's hand fell away, but his presence remained steady, compassionate. Know. They stood together at the edge of the pool, two figures in a timeless clearing, and Thomas felt something he hadn't felt in years. Not happiness exactly, not relief, but something simpler and more fundamental. Peace. The weight he'd been carrying. The boy on the steps, the teenager with the rejection letter. All those versions of himself holding disappointments like stones. They were still part of him, but they felt lighter now, held differently. Not as evidence of unworthiness, but as moments in a life. Just moments, just disappointments. Just the ordinary experience of being human and hoping and sometimes not getting what you hoped for. The path continued beyond the pool, winding back toward the fountain, toward the gate, toward the city. Thomas turned to follow it, and the old man walked beside him, his walking stick tapping a gentle rhythm on the path. Thomas became aware of the bench beneath him, the fountain's gentle music, the weight of his messenger bag at his side. The old man was gone, or maybe he had never been there. The park around him looked ordinary now, just a small green square between office buildings, though the light still held that golden quality, softer than morning should be. He pulled the presentation materials from his bag and looked at them with different eyes. The expensive paper, the careful formatting, the hours of preparation. He could see now what they represented. Another offering, another attempt to earn something that had never needed earning. Thomas held the pages gently, with compassion for the person who had made them. That person had been doing his best with what he understood, had been trying to fill a gap the only way he knew how. There was no shame in that, no failure, just a misunderstanding that had taken 30 years to unravel. He tucked the papers back into his bag and stood. The park felt both ordinary and sacred now, as if the veil between the two had thinned enough that he could see they were the same thing. The fountain played its simple music. A breeze moved through the trees. Somewhere a bird called. Just a bird singing, because that's what birds do. Thomas walked back through the gate between the stone pillars and emerged onto the city street. The afternoon had arrived. While he'd been in the park, the city moved around him with its usual rhythms, and he moved through it, changed in a way that had no name. The train ride home was peaceful. He watched the landscape blur past. But he wasn't looking ahead or behind. He was simply present with the motion, the rhythm, the journey itself. When his station appeared, he gathered his bag and stepped onto the familiar platform. Evening was falling as he walked to his car. The October air had that particular quality of autumn twilight, cool and gentle, carrying the scent of leaves and wood smoke and the year turning toward rest. Thomas drove home through the streets he knew by heart, and everything looked exactly the same and completely different. At home he made tea and sat by the window. The disappointment was still there, but it no longer felt heavy. It was just a feeling, rising and falling like breath, like the fountain's water, like everything that comes and goes. He thought of the boy on the steps and sent him love across the years. That boy had done nothing wrong, had never been not enough, had simply been a child hoping and waiting and believing something that wasn't true from an ordinary disappointment. Thomas sipped his tea and watched the evening deepen into night. Tomorrow, his calendar, held empty spaces. The unknown waited there as it always had. Not as absence, but as possibility. Not as something to fill, but as something to meet. He was enough. He had always been enough. And that simple truth, finally recognized, was the gift his disappointment had been trying to give him all along. Good night.