Sounds of Silence
Sound is a vocabulary of Nature.
Nature is so powerful, so strong that capturing its essence is not easy. Earth, sky, woods, fields, lakes and rivers, mountains and the sea are excellent school masters and teach us more than what we can learn from books. God cannot be found in noise and restlessness. He is a friend of silence. Nature; trees, flowers, grass all grow in silence. Sun, moon, stars move in silence. Three basic elements of Nature are greenery, sunlight and water. Plants add serenity while water bodies have soothing sounds. Our mind is nurtured in quiet spaces where distractions are kept to a minimum. They are sanctuaries of ‘sounds of silence’. We need silence to touch our souls. Peacefulness and tranquility are the sounds of silence, sounds so freaking loud.
Technically, sound is a vibration passing through a medium such as gas, liquid or a solid. There is no place on earth, barring space that is actually silent. Sound is the vocabulary of nature. Sound and silence are the material of music that is integrated by composing. The earth has music for those who listen. Three great elementary sounds in nature are those of rain, wind blowing through thick forests and that of the waves on a beach. The natural sounds of whistling birds, leaves crunching under the feet of a moving squirrel or a gentle wind whirling around us, are all sounds of silence. If you listen to the sound of silence, it has a language of its own, whispering secrets that can only be shared with the heart. The sound of life has a divine silence. Speed of light is way faster than that of the sound and that of emotions even beats the light. Emotions are the sounds of silence that help us communicate with each other without words. They are the language of the soul. They never lie.
“God cannot be found in noise and restlessness. He is a friend of silence.”
I am not a loner in the true sense of the word, I enjoy company of friends but I can be termed as one when I am in the company of nature. Silence is a great art of conversing with nature. Listen to silence; it has so much to say. I was in the boarding school located in the Hazara Hills where we were grilled through the tough regimen of the school life, day in and day out but once in a while, on a revered weekend, I would climb down the gorges surrounding the school campus and reach the water springs that flowed quietly along their narrow way through the luscious and damp greenness. This streaming water hardly made a sound, a feeble one perhaps, bubbling over the round stones. Its tiny voice made the stillness seem deeper. It was this sound of silence that touched my soul.
We were vacationing in Bhurban in the Murree Hills and staying in a terraced house facing the valley. Being an early riser and a nature lover, I would go out of my room at the dawn of the day and settle down on the terrace overlooking the valley. Ardently reading a book I would also enjoy the nature at its mesmerizing morning glory. This heavenly valley in the Murree Hills with green wilderness was a place of such a beauty that would lift any man’s soul out of the shadow. The valley was enchantingly still at that time of the day and in this singular calmness, sounds of silence came trooping and rushing to my mind, talking to me in private. I felt strange calmness stealing over me as it grew deeper, forcing me into self talking. Life is an echo; what you send out, comes back silently. Silence is a world that never stops talking. I could hear the silent echo of the verdant hills.
The famous English adage “A picture paints a thousand words’ is a befitting illustration of ‘sounds of silence’, referring to the notion that complex and sometimes multiple ideas can be conveyed by a single still image more effectively than a lengthy verbal description. The realm of visual art is a silent world with a sound of its own. Pictures, paintings, sculptures and decorative arts effectively capture the complexity of human feelings. Visuals, though silent, are always more effective than words, reaching the audience more efficiently.
“Life is an echo; what you send out, comes back silently.”
‘Sounds of silence’ appears to be a self contradictory title but in reality it is not. I have seen people talking without speaking and hearing without listening. In the process of conveying emotions and feelings, people take different routes in going about this task. Some draw, some debate, while others write. For me silence is another powerful mode of conveying emotions. I have begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. Happiness is the sound of silence. It is the sound of nature. A seed grows with no sound but a tree falls with a huge noise. Destruction has noise but creation is quiet. This is power of silence. Silence isn’t empty, it is full of answers. We must differentiate between sound and noise. Sound is beautiful, noise is deafening. It is the sound of silence and not the noise of silence. Silence has a sound but no noise. If you listen carefully, silence is soothingly beautiful. Who does not understand your silence, will probably not understand your words. It is a muted sound of one who can’t put his feelings in to words. Speech is silver, silence is gold.
Written by Dr. Shahid Qayyum
Published by Alisha Khuram
