What was the most important lesson you learned in your life?
Not all silence is golden
Living in silence's absence
Half the fun
of the travel
is the feeling
of lostness,
and while
you look
for your way
around,
you learn
a new
life lesson,
every time.
What I do now
is tell my story
and talk about
silence,
an unwanted gift,
a precious gift
we are bound
to take
home
from our
Bali
holiday.
Mist swirls between lofty peaks
as we walk
through the narrow streets,
dark houses
welcome us
in every twists and turns.
Foliage,
dripping with recent rain,
clings tenaciously to craggy roofs.
Ephemeral waterfalls
tumble
gently
down
manmade
rocky
crevices.
The faint sound
of water
fades
away
as we pass
through
the majestic door
and enter
our hotel room.
We open
the window
and silence
envelope us all.
The whole island
of 4 million people
is silent,
inside their huts
with the light off
and their mouths closed.
The airport shuts
the harbours are empty
everything is quiet
lost in meditation,
fasting
and reflection.
We are confused
stumbling into silence
shocked
all of sudden
what that strange feeling is...
A Balinese woman
in a small window
opposite,
waves at us
gently
with an open invitation
to join
her quest
for a sense
of inner peace.
But my friends
demand
their money back
they feel cheated,
never loosing
their noise
before,
the background grind of traffic,
the loud music in a bar
and endless phone ringing
while news bulletins
from TV
chasing them loudly
down
their hotel corridors
to their noisy cars.
" Remember,
back home,
last year,
in Kimberley,
when we got lost
in a huge northern stretch of WA?"
I try to reason with my friends,
"It is one of the most remote
places on Earth,
that desert silence..."
"I had music in my earphones
and an Ipod in my car,"
says one of my friends,
" Remember those fertile waters,
catching cod, mangrove jack
and barramundi,
drinking and singing
and making all that noise
to scare off large crocodiles."
"Back in Australia,"
other friend shouts at me:
"You supposed to be silent
for two minutes
on Anzac Day
and for a full one minute
on Remembrance Day,
not that really people are,
but could you
actually
be quiet
for a full day?"
We live in a noisy time,
so noisy
in fact
that soon,
by its very rarity,
silence
must
surely
become
extremely
valuable...
It will be time
for our Balinese
neighbours
to charge us
double
for this precious
commodity
and teach us
on the way
lesson
on tranquillity.
Meanwhile,
my Aussie mates,
will practise their will
and their right,
to show the world,
how the loudest shouters
claim
to be part of a silent majority...
