“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” – Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the United States, 1933 to 1945. It is often easy for humankind to slip into the humdrum and monotony of life, conforming to a dry melancholic routine day after day. Living life to the fullest is an illusion, many find drifting further and further away from them.
Mankind was never made to slog day after day, chasing after that material object. Be it popularity or money. Experience is known to be the best teacher, the moment and feelings burnt into memory. I remember the day it taught me what life truly meant. The cold winds raged, sending a chill down my spine. I was on my way to the heart of one of New Zealand’s national wonders, the Milford Sound. The plan was simple, to experience the purest medium of silence that any human being could experience on Earth. All of a sudden, the roaring engine died into a depressing hum before vanishing into the sweet silence. Silence itself is something difficult to describe. It is perhaps similar to the idea of a wailing baby succumbing to sleep. That sense of relief and warmth that washes over you is perhaps similar to silence. Yet silence, on a short fiery fuse, seems to roar with power, with striding strength and with lenient lessons. In the hustle and bustle of the city, silence sweeps and slips through the grasp of many, an invisible being that the visionless are blind too. A resounding ding from the cursed mobile phone chasing silence away.
Yet at that moment, as silence enveloped us, our ears shocked yet appeased felt a foreign warmth of comfort. Feelings overwhelmed me, a perfect brew of shock and happiness. In that moment, I felt an unfound joy. The boulder in my heart, slowly crumbling under this new found friend known as silence. I finally began to understand how blinded I seemed to be by the things of the mortal world. Things that would not be able to withstand the final test of death. There always seemed to be more to me, some newly found object to chase. I realised at that moment that life this wonderful gift from God was not something to be wasted away. Did we stumble somewhere over the course of evolution? Surely humans were not made to slog their lives away. Surely generation after generat...
