Gentle Time

It is a loud culture that we have created. Loud in its visuals, loud in its noise levels, loud even in unspoken thought. Loud in work; loud even in rest. Loud in its restless desires, loud in its fears and anger, in its despair and its happiness. So loud that it shuts down the gentle passage of time, the gentleness of the subtler life that abounds around us. I watch the banyan sprawling away in grandeur and yet there is immense silence around its tremendous creativity. And then I come out to see the high rises, loud in their polished splendor, loud in their needs and greed, loud in their emptiness of earth and sky. And I crave for gentler time; Time where each thought rises in the roots of the banyan, in miles of sea and sand, in breeze and stark winter, in stillness. Time, when creativity is not a 24X7 workday of respite-less churning as is the case with most of our lives. Time when we can relish the ground on which we tread and the air we breath. It is not that we work to make our ends meet, to feed our families, to find joy that bothers me, but that we can do it so mindless of all that we destroy in the wake of it, including the very air we breath, the very food we eat. We are so loud that we cannot sense the destruction, leave alone being well read about it. Much like the last calls of species that are going extinct, the voices of the gentle among us will disappear too for human time relentlessly pursues destruction. To learn to be quieter, still, reduce our production, find subtlety and simplicity in our daily lives is more important work than what a lot of us do. To learn to flow in gentle time; cosmic and earthy, seasonal, diurnal, nocturnal, cyclical, eternal is perhaps a greater challenge of our times than endless productivity in the name of work and creativity.

Tigress; Unbound strength
gently caresses the earth
in stealth and stride