Silence & Song

How unusual to be home at 8:12am on a workday! So strange in fact that my own bedroom feels foreign. Silence settles on me as I stir, but it is interrupted by birds gossiping on the balcony, neighbours scraping chairs from breakfast tables, and somewhere, a gentle prayer is stitched into the morning. Still, compared to the school's hustle and bustle: sirens, chatter, intercom announcements, and the exuberance of youth - this is silence.

Humans are noisy creatures. We don't just talk, we broadcast. And social media made sure of that, giving everyone instant access worldwide because what the world desperately needed was another reel of someone announcing: “Get ready with me…”  in their underwear. Lawd, how banal!

Perhaps that's why I've always loved the written word: it offers the whole opera without the decibels. A barking dog without ruptured eardrums. A melody that vibrates the bones without rattling the windows. The divine kind of sound, the kind you hear from the inside out.

By 8:23, my body is stacked under a waffle-weave blanket. Knees, breasts, and hair in a human pile-up that should be rushing to work but isn’t. Instead, I watch a single branch, stirred by a half-hearted wind, swaying behind sheer curtains. Sunlight tattoos the bed. A stranger's bed, actually! But expat life makes you an expert at borrowing other people's homes, countries, and cultures. You slip in, learn their rhythms, absorb their flavors, and carry a piece of each stamped on you like a passport.

Travel is supposed to be glamorous, according to the influencers and their glossy wanderlust shots. But somewhere in the marketing, we lost the true meaning behind the journey. We bought the destinations and the airplane tickets, not the discoveries and the human connections. 

I’m rethinking this idea of travel, and have decided I will henceforth set out on pilgrimage, on exploration, beyond brochures and Bali! And no, I don’t want to be sipping sodas in Santorini, or desert-bashing in Dubai.

And me? I don't want to wander today. I want to be still. I want to sit in the quiet spaces between the noise, stew in myself, and laugh with him about the absurdity of it all. I wonder: is aging liberation? Can I peel off the mask, drop the titles, and just be my naked self…no makeup, no pretense…eating hot buttered toast with tea at 8:45 on a sunny morning while the world goes about being the world with its craziness and chaos? 

At 59, liberation might just mean having toast slathered in real butter without the guilt, and while everyone else is still trying to reverse-engineer youth with collagen powders and kale, embracing your grumpy - old - graying - wrinkly - self because you’ve finally earned the rest.

Of course, a hacking cough interrupts, a reminder that this silence was not freely chosen but forced by stress and sleeplessness. Isn’t that the perfect metaphor? We don’t stop because we’ve decided; we stop because our bodies staged a coup. Grind culture doesn’t allow sabbaticals; it allows for the occasional MC when the body  calls a time-out.

Still, I've had a glimpse of the possibility of quiet days sets to slow and now that I’ve seen it, I can claim it.

Here's to long slow morning of listening to birdsong and the giggling of happy souls in soft whispers fluttering through open windows. Here's to the tyres of passing cars on asphalt creating gentle rhythms and the rip-roaring laughter of male friends conversing without a care in the world. Here's to my phone being on silent and my life being on pause just long enough to make big life-changing decisions.

This is a brief chapter in a long history, and what's facing me is a life-altering choice. I’ve prayed Istikhara because this is bigger than me. And so I wait, in the stillness between coughs and birdsong, wondering: what would happen if I chose silence and stillness every day?

And I hold my breath waiting for the answer.