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Words Are Seeds
“We Indians know about silence. We are not afraid of it. In fact, for us silence is more powerful than words. Our elders were trained in the ways of silence, and they handed over this knowledge to us. Observe, listen, and then act, they would tell us. That was the manner of living.
With you it is just the opposite… You reward the children that talk the most at school. In your parties you all try to talk at the same time. In your work you are always having meetings in which everybody interrupts everybody and all talk five, ten or a hundred times. And you call that ‘solving a problem’. When you are in a room and there is silence, you get nervous. You must fill the space with sounds. So you talk compulsorily, even before you know what you are going to say….
People should regard their words as seeds. They should sow them, and then allow them to grow in silence. Our elders taught us that the earth is always talking to us, but we should keep silence in order to hear her.
There are many voices besides ours…”
— From Deva Vibha
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“Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin
It has been my fate to live with people who talk a lot, my father, for example. One such…
