A photo essay on silence
Nearly 250 years ago Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in The Social Contract, "The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say 'This is mine' and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had some one pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: ‘Do not listen to this imposter.'" No one person or business should exclusively own large tracts of it. During our short lives we can only act as caretakers.
Humans once had a close and balanced relationship with all the natural world around them. This instinctive respect and empathy formed the basis of spirituality. I want to reclaim that spirituality and gently place it back where it belongs in the centre of our connection to the whole of ‘Life’. It is not such a big step to take all the words and feelings currently associated with gods and nirvanas and carefully direct them back to the beating heart of Life. I believe that our future as a species depends on this.
Is anything ever silent? Someone once tried to find and record total silence but he never found it. And when we think we have found it, we hear noise in our heads? How can we still those thoughts that echo off the walls of our minds? How can I empty my mind and find the silence there that mirrors the one around me? Why do we need silence? Maybe because it is the space in which things can grow, the small incipient thought that is too delicate to compete, that would otherwise be drowned by clamour. Ironically, as we get older and our hearing deteriorates, we become more sensitive to noise. We have a pressing need to hear what matters and extraneous noise more easily blocks access.
Travel is a privilege and it matters enormously what we do with it. It is not something to be taken lightly, to engage with superficially. It’s not another place on the list to be ticked off. The planet has suffered for us to get there. Yes, we have to touch lightly and with respect everywhere we go. But over the years I have come to realise that I have to do more. I have to offer something back. I have given public talks that share a little of what I have learned. And now this book.
The Other Way by David Trubridge ($98.99) will be launched at Auckland Writers Festival in August. Copies are available from selected bookstores and the author's site.
