Listening Out for Kindness OR The Other Side of Silence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Some days, it can feel as if we are falling apart; everything goes wrong or at least not according to plan and listening or reading to the daily News extends that sense of falling apart to the world itself; it and we, it seems, are in free fall ...

Whatever happened to kindness, we may well wonder? Suddenly, we hear or read about a simple act of kindness that touches the heart, restores our sense of being part of something worthwhile even if that worthwhile-ness is vulnerable to attack from extreme forces that have no place in in a world where love, peace, tolerance and kindness are seen as strengths not weaknesses, and just because these are elements of human nature with which we will almost certainly always have to contend doesn’t mean to say we cannot win our own personal war against them if not every battle. 

A teacher who was well-liked but considered eccentric, once told a noisy class, ‘Shut up, the lot of you! Now, listen to the silence. Yes, listen to the silence. The chances are it’s an angry one, at the very least frustrated. And what’s on the other side, eh? Kindness, that’s what, a whole new world to which the inner ear will lead any one of us who can be bothered to listen out and head for it.’ For a whole minute, you could have heard a pin drop, and then we pressed on with the lesson, about which I recall nothing, 50+ years later, but that silence. 

'Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.' - Henry James

LISTENING OUT FOR KINDNESS or THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE

There is a darkness

that is not night, but an absence

of light

in a space that is no vacuum,

but filled

with all the sound and fury

of an alarm clock

ticking towards a clapping of hands

in applause

for a sorry world’s falling

to pieces

There is a silence

that is not quiet, but an absence

of any sound,

freeing the senses to urge cloth ears

open up

to all the sound and fury

of unspeakable

injustices, prejudices, malpractices,

sure to cause

a sorry world’s falling

to pieces

There is a voice

that has no words, but an absence

of expression

meant to shatter the darkness,

release the silence

to all the sound and fury

of the human heart

raging against powers-that-be

setting agendas

that would see its humanity

in pieces

There is a life force

that births humankind in a stream

of consciousness

and nurtures it in the darkness

of a silence

daring the sound and fury

of human existence

to find a voice, make itself heard

with the resonance

of a kindness sure to piece us

together

Copyright R. N. Taber 2015