Hello...
Well, it's another midnight hello...
Makes me remember a dear friend from Japan who told me that sleep is like a train, if you miss it, you have to wait for the next one.
Well, this night something strange is happening with the schedule because I haven't seen any trains yet. So will you wait with me? ;-)
It's quiet and dark, outside I mean. I hear my tapping on the keyboard as the only sound. Strange. At daytime that would not really happen. Hearing that. There are so many other sounds and noise...
we are no longer accustomed to quiet are we...
At the same we need that. I need that.
When I was somewhat 19 years of age, my mom took me with her to a silence retreat for three days.
YES, I CAN SAY I'VE BEEN SILENT FOR THREE DAYS and I can assure you, I try to impress people with that because for some reason they have a hard time believing that...
The three days was good and amazing. It was not like being alone and quiet but in a group with a bunch of strangers and quiet... We would eat together around a big table and no one would speak, we would listen to classical music during the meal and in a way it was a relief to not have to make some kind of small talk with people but share the silence. And smiles.
When it is silent, your senses awake more, you start seeing things you would not normally pay attention to, you hear the small sounds that usually get buried in other noise... You become more aware of your breathing, your own presence ... and your own ability or disability to be present.
I will always remember those three days and what silence taught me. It actually became a part of me, something I need to find at times, regularly...to quiet myself and be still.
What amazed me at the end of the retreat is how close I would start feeling with the group despite the fact that I knew nothing about them, not even their names. Later on I found out that one in the group was a director of a bank... and I thought again, how different it is meeting with people when we don't make preassumptions of each other or start categorizing in our heads because of some information we have on them.
It seems in todays society it's never enough to be simply human. It is like we have to have credit of this and that and then we have some status based on our education or level of work or other experience.
At the same, at the end, none of that matters. At the end what really matters is what kind of fellow human beings we are to each other. What we can share and build together. What we can trust eachother with.
If there is silence, let us not be afraid to pause in it.
If there is love, let it be pure love, in which humans of all age can cuddle to find themselves. For it is only in love we can find the truth of ourselves.
<3 <3 <3
With no sleep in my eye I shall however move myself towards the station.
Love,
Rina
