There we are – guests (as airlines like to call their passengers these days), waiting anxiously for the boarding announcement of the day’s first flight. There’s an uncomfortable silence in the air.
I go back to a childhood memory – to a family evening on the porch. Dad has a book and a comfortable chair, mom and sister are out in the garden tending plants with care, a visiting aunt has her embroidery going and I am happily perched on the floor with a few hundred building blocks in my hand. Silence reigns – but unlike in the first paragraph, a very comfortable silence.
Which brings me to the question on hand, which one would I rather have?
- Some restful music in the background, a drink and a good book in my hands – as I rest in the lounge playing back a hundred times in my head the “escalation meeting” that is on my agenda for tomorrow?
- The ability of the young world traveller travelling economy class to be serenely absorbed in a tome on world culture as she rests on her backpack – unmindful of the cacophony of announcements in a strange language and a foreign land?
What wins – Material abundance and a poverty of peace, or limited means but unlimited freedom?
Pondering over this, I walk to get some more coffee and come across a gentleman pushing sixty years reclining on one of the plusher sofas; eyes closed, a wide smile on his face. He’s dressed in an impeccable sit and on his tummy, lies a book half read – and Eckhart Tolle smiles from its cover.
There’s a lesson here I understand – and while my mind starts its quest for it, my body goes searching for the caffeine.
And then it hits me. This man is the answer. Perspective comes first and blooms into inner stillness.Thats all we ever really need,
First class travels – or for that matter a backpack and torn jeans – have nothing to do with silence whatsoever. From inner stillness comes comfortable silences no matter where you are – in a executive lounge or at the bazaar. Agree?
