Quieting the storm
I stood by the edge of the precipice and, as I held my breath, it felt for a moment that time – and life itself – had paused. On either of my sides, the Cliffs of Moher graced the Irish coastline with their wilderness, while ahead, long way off the horizon, lost into the blurriness of imagination, there stretched the unfamiliar grounds of Newfoundland. A drizzle hovered in the air, spiced with the salty breath of the sea, so soft that its stains on my jacket evaporated instantly, blending with the exhale of the earth, moistening bodies, thoughts, and memories alike. The ocean below rumbled on the tempo of ancient chanties, and the waves, their flow unbroken through the centuries, kept crashing on the rocks, moaning and panting with desire, conquering, surrendering, destroying and creating to the fringes of eternity.
Unlike the previous, unusually sunny days of my stay on the emerald island, that afternoon was misty and mysterious. Everything – from the fields and the sea to the air and the faces of the people – appeared dipped in blue-grey shades of a mystical quality beseeming the ambience of the Gaelic land. The path snaking along the coast was busy with tourists and hikers; yet, their presence was little more than a whisper, almost inaudible against the thunderous echo of the Atlantic or the squeaks of the seagulls. The cliffs, with their imposing length and delicate lace dimming at the edges of vision, dominated all senses and sentiments, and my mind emptied as the few words that lingered on the lips melted – like the drizzle – into nothingness. Beyond the familiar tune of the elements, repeated over time with such tenacity that its melody ultimately dominated the music-prone spirit of the Irish people, there was silence. And, I fathomed, it was the profundity of this silence that lured the soul to the edge of the precipice, where the meanings of our physical perceptions soften, and intuitive understandings emerge from the timeless core of our being.
Moments of silence are not uncommon in the life a traveller. Their presence is discernible in the monotonous thudding of the footsteps on a hiking trail, the unfolding of an endless tarmac ribbon, the white noise of an aeroplane, or the lapping murmur of the sea. Still, not all of them are meaningful. Instead, most represent mere intermediary milestones destined to iron the wrinkles of the heart, leading, like the proverbial crumbs, to the ultimate destination: a moment of silence loud enough to prevail over clutter and, thus, translate into comfort and consolation.
At the Cedars of God.
Over the years, I have counted, again and again, the beads on my rosary of quietude, but I can recall only a handful of instances when serenity exploded into clarity. That day by the Cliffs of Moher was one of them. There were also those few minutes on top of Mt. Kilimanjaro; my last evening among the lavender-tinted peaks of the Inca trail in Peru; the stroll through the Cedars of God in Lebanon; or my final steps on the Druk Path in Bhutan, accompanied by a melodious chanting of prayers that poured, with divine serendipity, into the air as we crossed the last turn of the trail.
Twilight at our last camping spot on the Inca Trail.
All those experiences brought – and still bring – tears to my eyes, as it always happens when one gets humbled by the grace of a miracle. However, as I grew wiser, I realised that their magnificence lied not in their intrinsic charm, but rather on the groundwork that had preceded them: the acknowledgement and respect of a series of deceptively inconsequential moments of silence that heralded the crescendo, tenderly preparing the heart to receive a message at the opportune time.
Women approaching a tiny monastery at the end of the Druk Path, chiming the bells and turning the prayer wheels.
It is a year, almost to the day, since I stood by the precipice of the Cliffs of Moher, rejoicing in the inner freedom bestowed upon me by a singular combination of land and sea. Today, a year later, I stand with similar awe in an almost fictional reality – another unique coalescence of elements – navigating my way through a different type of a pause, this time universal and tangible. Within the surreal maze of our mandatory, virtual barriers – our desperate embankment against the spread of a virus – a newfound silence has emerged: a shadow that stalks our every move, befriends our fears and insecurities and sets our gaze upon an inner, so far unapproachable, horizon. Surrendering, however, to this stillness that often feels imposed or emerging out of the depths of our anxiety, has not been easy. During the first stages of a process that caught us unawares, we have been fighting our physical inactivity with chatter, denying, resisting, sometimes incessantly talking, to face the intensity of our future’s volatility.
Over the past few weeks, I have been following with unwavering fascination the unfolding of the full spectrum of human emotions and attitudes. There have been incidents of panic, disbelief, arrogance, and selfishness, as well as countless voices of compassion, solidarity, creativity, generosity, and altruism. Most of such worthy examples – even those among them that barely conceal an underlying marketing manoeuvre – are heartwarming and inspiring. Yet, I could not shake off the feeling that they have been rushed, as if forcing a state of intimacy, often deprived of focus, within a distorted world. So far, the inevitable moments of silence have not been fully acknowledged or respected, and, thus, clarity and inner peace remain elusive.
Silence is often scary, and, in our fragility, we are eager to fill what we perceive as a gap with our presence: our noise, thoughts, and creations. The absence of sound, just like any void, reminds us too much of our mortality, threatening our existence, individual or collective, with irrevocable oblivion. And, yet, our present transformation of global dimensions, this rite of passage if you wish, demands reticence so that we can reaffirm our humility and advance to higher levels of consciousness. As we go through a loss of innocence – or, perhaps, we reclaim, as a species, a sense of innocence lost – we have the opportunity to scrutinise our integrity under the unwelcomed spotlight of our attention, and redefine, in practical and spiritual terms, our future identity.
By tradition, our survival instincts urge us to emotionally weather any storm through a series of actions; still, in an ironic twist of fate, it is our compliance to non-action that, currently, holds the key to a solution, presenting us with a symbol, archetypal and all-powerful, that forces us to reconsider ancient patterns. Ultimately, silence has never been the end, only the beginning: the womb from which knowledge and life perpetually sprout. As a new era patiently waits to dawn upon us, as we probe the boundaries of our nature and test the quality of our human connections, perhaps we are called to quiet – rather than weather – the storm so that we can trace the lines to the meridian system that holds us together, and, finally, adjust to a higher, more intelligent, and more complete level of being.
Photo credits: © Konstantina Sakellariou.
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