2020 started off with the biggest contradiction. To my resolution that is. Kind of reminding me why I never really thought much of new year resolutions. The last time I blogged I vowed to be silent in the new year. And by silence, I meant the silence of the word and more importantly of the thought. Naturally, I thought that thinking for the blog and blogging has to be on a hold too for 2020. You see, the actual drill was to keep the mind present and in stillness and I thought blogging is anything but mental stillness for me. And I couldn't have thought of something more wrong.
So, the resolve was put to test and how. It was like all of a sudden, a bunch of my near and dear caught hold of me and cornered me to break my silence. I spent the better part of my first week emulating a call center and listening to people go into verbal outpour of what seemed like concern, frustration and disappointment rolled into one, at the lack of my accessibility. I soaked in all that showers (or love) and felt so secure and snug in the fact that I have so many loved ones that would not really take a silent me. At that point, the resolution felt like the worst vow I'd ever taken in my life. "What?" "I had to be silent?" "Why?" "Why did nature provide a voice to the human kind?" - right?? Right!
And then the chatter and catching up dwindled to silence. After my morning chores are taken care of, I find myself in this cocoon on silence, wrapped up securely around me. I listen to the sounds of nature outside the oversized windows and consider even some music or television in the background as pure unadulterated noise. It is in these moments of absolute stillness that I hear a dictation in my head and like a well trained stenographer, I open the lappy and type these inspirations out in my virtual space. So the revelation is that all this catharsis of writing comes out of my silence. I mean not the banters and blah blahs but anything that I prize as some sort of creativity definitely stems out of the stillness and that cannot be anything else but the Source expressing itself through me.
The other day, the first born and I ventured into some bonding time at the store cluster. As we aimlessly skimmed through the isles of a cosmetic store, I froze in my tracks when I found a little girl settled up in the front of the busy store, lost in what looked like utter stillness, with a book to keep her company. She seemed like a little saint in probation, honing her concentration skill while being oblivious to her surroundings. I quickly whipped out my smart device and froze that perfection in lens, as always making sure not to meddle with anyone's privacy. And like a chain reaction, I had my own stillness kick in. It was like one of those movie scenes where everything freezes and all you hear is violins in the background. "Thoughts are a drain, be in the present. Keep a tab on where all your mind wanders. Is the past or the future thought that robs you of the present?" I imagine tidbits of spiritual wisdom appear like talk bubbles above my head.
Then the wisdom dawns - what's this incompleteness I feel inside of me? What's this constant 'Where do you go when you have nowhere to go?' question that plagued my mind since the dawn of 2020?"
I suddenly seemed to have found my answers. This space is where I go. It's my go to friend that takes the dump and sorts it out. This space is my therapy, my friend, my crutches when I limp, my readers when the font blurs, my wrap when the chills emerge, my company in my aloneness.
But of course, it's a toast for a silent new year, but isn't life an irony in action?
So I come back home, wandering in those lanes of chatter and conversation finding myself in the silence of this loved space.
The resolution is released. The resolve - is on auto pilot. And I vow not to build dams to what has to flow.
Let it take over. And let me step aside.
:)
