A few nights ago, I was walking my dog alone along the sea-shore at about 11 o’clock. It was one of those rare and beautiful nights. There was no-one around, a half moon was up in the northern sky and Jupiter was low in the west, the night was absolutely still, the sea was like a mirror, the stars were everywhere but it was cool and splendid. It was so still that you could actually hear yourself thinking. It was in a way a mystical experience where you felt at one with nature. I struggled to find the thoughts to express my emotions.
Suddenly the dog stopped and stiffened. She sniffed the air and her snout pointed towards a shadowy figure sprawled out motionless on the rocks at the water’s edge. I instinctively thought that something was wrong and slowly made my way to where the dog was by now showing sprightly interest. I came upon a young lady and politely asked her if anything was wrong. It turned out that she was fine and that she was an Italian on holiday here. When I enquired what she was doing, sprawled clothed on the rocks so close to the water’s edge, she replied: “Sto guardando il silenzio” – I am looking at the silence.
As I took my leave and left her to her own silent musing, I thought how funny that she chose to use the verb “to look” to describe a sensation that, if anything, pertained to the sense of hearing – or the lack of it in this case. Why not “sto sentendo il silenzio” – “I am listening to the silence?” Then I realised that the sensation of the physical phenomenon had such an effect on all the senses that it penetrated the noumenal thinking dimension and that one could in a way “look” into the depth of the three-dimensional physical phenomenon. It was so profound that it had an encompassing depth – that was it – that was the description of the emotion that I could not find words to express earlier! It is odd that I too could particularly feel this depth.
At the beginning of summer, I wrote an article about the need for people to stand and stare. The need to take time off from busy schedules and find the time to spend with spouses, friends and loved ones and recharge much needed energy into our personal batteries and help ease much of the anxieties of today’s world.
There are beautiful things in life worth standing and watching apart from TV and computers and notebooks and i-Phones. We have to learn to rest and relax in-between the hard work episodes of life, otherwise life will pass us by very quickly. We need to take these lessons with us into the fast approaching winter season. There is a time for working and a time for resting and when the time for resting presents itself, we should learn to seize it.
It is said that the grace of God is that which God imparts to us and which helps us to order our lives and leads us closer to its real end. After all, it is said that the kingdom of God is within us. We should not forget that often the grace of God is imparted when we tear ourselves away from the world’s bustle and take the time to listen to it: to see through the silence in a way!
As we prepare to return to our busy routines at work and school, we need to take these beneficial experiences with us to help pull us through the hard and dark winter months so that the spring will again be ours! In his poem Ulysses, Alfred Lord Tennyson captures so well the will needed to spur us on. He expresses his feelings about the need to go forward and brave the struggles of daily life when he wrote: “We are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; one equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”.
Dr. Michael Asciak MD, M.Phil, PhD
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