I have quite a few friends who are a lot older than me, and I like this. I think that older people know how to live life. I see them taking their time, walking slowly, and looking around rather than stuck in their phone. They are also very comfortable with silence in social situations… something that I try to practice regularly. If I meet someone new, I try to have a silent moment with them and then I know whether it is really someone who I can be myself with. Silent moments in life are important I think.
Every day, I wake up and try to have a silent moment to myself. It’s more difficult than I realise on some days, but I think it is one of the best practices that we can commit to. It doesn’t take very long, just a few minutes. Remembering that our life is lived now. Not in the future, and not in the past. Once we know how to get there, the present can be a very empowering place to be.
Sometimes, travelling to so many places and for so long… I can start to feel as if I am going nowhere. I know I am travelling forward, but I don’t really know what’s going to happen and I can’t really predict where I will “end up.” I don’t move with a planned itinerary, and sometimes this can cause a kind of out of body experience. I think this kind of feeling could happen whenever anyone is walking a path into the unknown, whether it happens to involve travelling or not. I always meet it, anyway.
This is why I am grateful for living so close to the beach. There is too much to observe in this environment, for me to be anywhere else but the present. The waves are an endless source of interest to me, even though they are repetitive. Each wave forms differently, each crash onto the shore sounds unique. The sea breeze slaps you in the face with its cold hands, and the sea salt enters your lungs through the fine mist rhythmically leaping into the air. The water dives forward, then pulls back. Forward, back, forward, back.
I always seem to find a metaphor for life by the beach. We leave the present moment regularly, diving forward into the future… sometimes falling back into the past. But if we take a few moments of silence then we can pull ourselves up and back into the present moment. Where everything is okay, and knowing where we are is more important than knowing where we’re going.
As the cycle goes on, we share a silent moment with all that’s around us. I think that’s why I believe that sharing silence with a person is more than just comfort. It’s truly a form of love.
Leave a Reply