The sounds of silence
By this time, you may have already started with the Holy Week break at your favorite resort island, getting all the fun, sun, and the tan you want. Or you may be in a quiet sanctuary, away from the dizzying distractions, reflecting on your immediate past and silently thinking of the future that lies ahead. Or you may still be at the point of planning what to do during the long break, and are considering whether to stay in the city where it is quieter and less crowded, to do some spring cleaning, take care of your body, improve your physical appearance or go through some spiritual cleansing and rekindling.
If you opt for silence, and use the time to find “soul-utions” to nagging life issues, you might want to bring with you a copy of the book 365 Prescriptions For The Soul by Dr. Bernie S. Siegel, a bestselling author and well-known proponent of alternative approaches to healing not just the body, but the mind and soul as well. A soul-ution, Siegel declares, “Helps you solve your problems by taking a broad stroke. It speaks to you through your feelings, dreams, and visions. It leads to a right action, and resolves conflicts and difficulties in ways that lead to a deeper sense of peace.”
In his tome, Siegel lays down, in bite-sized bits of wisdom, daily doses of inspiration, hope and love, presented in a friendly and accessible manner that conveniently fits into your busy business and life schedule. Here are my personal choices from Siegel’s list of 365 nuggets of guidance and wisdom. Use them to start you off on a journey towards a more “soulful” and love-filled existence.
• Keep the plot of your life simple. As Greek language teacher Athenaeus claimed, “Beauty when unadorned is adorned the most.” Simplicity makes things visible to everyone and thus enlightens all who are exposed to what is presented. If you want people to know you, do not cover yourself with things that disguise you and camouflage your true essence. Your life will become much less complicated when people know the simple truth about you. This way, you will be able to devote your energy to what you believe and not to creating an image of yourself that deceives.
• Give what you wish to receive. If you want nothing, then give nothing. If you want love, then give love. What you give freely will come back to you. “You give but little when you give of your possessions,” prophet Kahlil Gibran asserted, “since it is when you give of yourself that you truly give.” You must continue to give in order to receive. How you treat others will ultimately be how they treat you.
• Don’t feel bad when someone criticizes you; it’s one of the certainties of life. There are only three things that are certain: death, taxes and criticism. Criticism is often a difficult thing to deal with. But there is only one way to avoid it: if you do nothing and say nothing. “Less talk, less mistake; more talk, more mistake,” as some people would put it. When you have an honest opinion of yourself and your value as a person, you will be able to handle criticism. If you are going to survive disagreement and disagreeable people, you will need to find inner strength. “You learn much from the disagreeable things people say, for they make you think, whereas the good things only make you glad,” Polish piano teacher Theodore Leschetzky asserted.
• Always believe that patience is a virtue. The ability to wait patiently for something is a valuable character trait. “It is our impatience that spoils things,” French playwright Moliere affirmed, and added that “patience allows you time to know more about yourself and the person you are dealing with.”
• Spend some time in the dark. When facing emotional despair, hopelessness, or physical anguish, going into the darkness helps you find yourself and renew your life. It is in the nothingness that you can stop and discover peace and generate answers. When you see your true potential, you can then recreate yourself. You can become like a blank canvas and start to paint a new you. Don’t be afraid of darkness. It can lead you to unearth your own black hole. And from there emerge with renewed energy and awareness. Let the tomb become a womb. As author Joseph Campbell believed, “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
• Have no regrets. American journalist Sydney J. Harris maintained, “Regret for the things you did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things you did not do that is inconsolable.” From that perspective, examine your life today. Think about some risks you have been unwilling to take: perhaps changing careers, chasing a dream, opening your heart to another person, or being all you can be. You can do nothing to change the decisions you made in your past, but the future holds many possibilities. Learn the lesson from the movie Harold and Maude, where Ruth Gordon, playing an 80-year-old woman, exclaimed to a troubled young man, “Give me an L, give me an I, give me V, give me an E. LIVE!”
• Be a best friend forever. That BFF is someone who can put up with your follies and shortfalls but still put up with you and be there for you. Stop putting yourself down when others don’t like something you’ve done. Even if what you did was incorrect, unsafe, or unintelligent, it is the act, not you, that is the issue. So do not let others destroy the relationship you have with the most important person in your life — you! Accept your uniqueness and free others to be themselves, too. “Everyone is a bore to someone. That is unimportant. The thing to avoid is being a bore to oneself,” British writer Gerald Brenan advised.
• Say the serenity prayer when feeling troubled, and remember its message. The plea reads, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Your world is like a portion of God’s canvas. It is constantly being worked and reworked. The creator must have his reasons and hopefully you will understand them someday. Understanding won’t eliminate change, but acceptance of this truth will enable you to live in a more peaceful state. When you don’t resist change, you flow with the process of creation and help make it a true work of art.
• Fail successfully. You can see failure as a reason to stop what you are doing, or you can ask yourself why you failed and then learn from your mistakes. Former IBM chairman TJ Watson said, “You can be discouraged by failure, or you can learn from it.” Mistakes can be a valuable part of life’s curriculum. You would do well to fail frequently so you can learn a great deal more than someone who is afraid to fail and thus takes little risk. If you have passion for what you are doing and aim high, good things will happen even if it takes a lot of failing to accomplish them. Accidents, failures, and mistakes can often lead us to our greatest successes and open us to our true interests.
• See through the eyes of an optimist and observe what direction your life takes. Studies show that optimists live longer, healthier lives than pessimists, even when the pessimist’s view of life is more accurate. American psychiatrist Dr. Karl Menninger said, “Attitudes are more important than facts.” That is why what you tell yourself is extremely significant and helps to shape your destiny.” What you see is what you get. Your attitude determines what you see, so it’s best to always look on the bright side. The choice is yours. Be convinced by Christian Pastor Charles Swindoll’s position “that life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you react to it.”
• Cleanse yourself with a good cry. When you’re done crying, let others know it is all right for them to do the same thing. Emotions held within destroy, but those that are washed away with tears restore. Think of a sponge lying dried up and hard on the kitchen counter. If you didn’t shed tears, that would be you. But if you plunge the sponge into warm water, it softens, just as you do when you are willing to cry tears of pain, joy, love and acceptance. Social reformer Henry Ward Beecher shared, “God washes the eyes by tears until they can behold the invisible land where tears shall come no more.”
• Be generous with praise. “It is the sweetest of all sounds,” Greek historian Xenophon said. It is seen in your eyes when you look at your beloved. It is felt in your touch when you embrace. It is heard in your voice when you speak to the one you adore. Like helium, it lifts you above the troubles and obstacles of life. It is the food of the soul, and no one survives without it. Sprinkle it freely like fertilizer and those you love will grow, bloom and blossom.
• Listen to your guilt feelings and follow their guidance. Do not avoid them; they are markers of mental health. Humorist Erma Bombeck looked at it as “the gift that keeps on giving.” There is a healthy guilt that leads you to feel sorrow for your behavior and to seek to make amends for your actions. When you do, understanding, forgiveness, and healing come together and you can move on. Those who have no guilt feelings are emotionally unhealthy and a danger to society and all living things.
• Never lose hope. “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul. And sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all,” poet Emily Dickinson mused. What you hope for will differ and change with time. You need hope to go on living. Hope inspires you to reach for the future. It gives you something to look forward to and strive for on your path. If you had no hope — for a cure, for winning the lottery, for falling in love, for the end of war, for being free of abuse or for having food, warmth, clothing, and shelter — you would have no reason to go on.
• Live in the moment. “To be 70 years young is sometimes more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old,” physician and professor Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed. When you are older, you don’t have to explain everything you do that doesn’t make sense to people around you. After all, you are older and are having a “senior moment.” When you live in the moment, you stop thinking and worrying and begin to contemplate the world around you. When you do, you begin to see a much more interesting and beautiful world. You become a teacher and a wise elder for the young ones.
Take some time to listen to sounds of silence. It is not about being deaf to the sounds of life, or the absence of sound, but the ability to hear and listen to life going around us and in us. Bishop Honesto Ongtioco, in his homily during the Mass for the fourth-year anniversary of the ABS-CBN chaplaincy, shared Pope Benedict XVI’s reminder about the value of the “sounds of silence” during this year’s celebration of World Communications Day.
“It sounds contradictory,” Bishop Ongtioco said. “Many now assume that effective modern communication implies being able to make the greatest noise amidst the bustle and confusion that is the world’s 24-hour rolling, new circus. But silence, as the Holy Father reminds us, is an extremely important part of communication, for without it, who could listen properly to what is being said?”
The principle is a revival of the song popularized in the 1960s by Simon and Garfunkel. In the third stanza of the song it says, “And in the naked light I saw, 10,000 people, maybe more, people talking without speaking, people hearing without listening.”
Silence is one of the greatest gifts God has given you. Silence is the most beautiful doorway into prayer, peace, contemplation and true wisdom. Silence is also a discipline that leads to humility and to a love that does not seek to possess. Only the person who is truly silent can hear the whisperings of God’s love deep within his or her heart. Without silence we who claim to believe in Him would never know God or be able to discern His will for us.
“Listen” has the same letters as “silent.” As someone anonymously said, “Listen to the silence of your heart, and you will know what to do.”
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E-mail bongosorio@yahoo.com or bong_osorio@abs-cbn.com for comments, questions or suggestions. Thank you for communicating.
