Life has its own ways of opening our eyes, into ourselves and sometimes to others as well.

A few days back, my voice went kaput!!! A bout of a bad cold and cough and all I could hear was air between the words, that I was attempting to speak!!!

I was talking fine one moment and after a minute of racking cough, my voice was gone. I opened my mouth to say something and it was whispers all the way.

I was out traveling and on a pilgrimage of a kind. One that I was looking forward to, for days. The least I expected was to be down with a whispering voice. The person sitting next to me would find it difficult to hear, let alone understand what I am attempting to say. If this was the state of someone sitting near me, can you imagine someone who was a little away from me, to whom I was trying to talk to? I had to hence get into communicating thru actions. Whoa!! This was tougher. Reflexive action was to talk, and everything else I thought was a poor substitute.

Restaurants, where I need to order food at.., temples, where I wanted some information about.. people, who I was meeting for the first time – to everyone I was whispering to. Well, I went all out to raise my voice (no pun intended :-)), but realised that the situation was way out of my control. Not even the softest of the squeaks could be heard.. ‘If you cannot control it, handle it’ 🙂 and that’s what I had to..

What fascinated me more was the way I reacted to this situation, and the way I felt others did.. Everything begins at home, so let me begin with what I did..

– I needed to be sure that the person I was communicating to was close to me, so that I could whisper and they could hear. This involved movement from where I was and this was getting to be a laborious one..

– Sometimes, I would need to whisper loudly so that the other person could hear what I was saying, especially if the place was noisy.. Repeating the same thing time and again was getting to be quite a frustration and I wanted to just give it up after a while..

– Picking up the phone when it rang, was like hesitatingly. I became choosy about the calls I picked and people who knew my plight with my voice, were nice enough not to call. In addition all calls, be it the one I made or I received, ended sooooooooon.. This truly helped me, with my voice and also with my time too:-)

– The doctor advised a complete voice rest.  What’s that? Voice was a word I understood, but rest no :-).Did I have a choice? I certainly did. I took the choice of giving it the much needed rest.

When I give my voice a rest, there are others also impacted. Over to what I felt about how others reacting to my voice.. Remember, it was only my feeling and may not necessarily be true 🙂

– There were people I was meeting for the first time, who I thought looked at me weirdly; when they heard me asking for something, in whispers. Some of their faces cleared up, when they heard from me that I could not speak due to a throat infection.. Some of them continued to look blank. Now what were these people wondering? or maybe they were not.. Why do I need to think for them? 🙂

– In one of the hotels, the person I was speaking to nodded his head when I asked for some warm water, but he continued to stand there. I kept looking at him, wishing that he would move; but no, he did not move and nor did he seem to action anyone else. I kept staring at him (that’s the best I could do at that time, and I guess it could be said that I had a reason for this staring also :-)), willing him to look at me, so that I could signal again for some warm water. Oh and finally he did!!! Voila, warm water appeared!! I wonder if he was puzzled at the voice he heard but did not..

– Some people were jocularly saying that it was going to be ‘peaceful’ time for all around. Could not agree with them more. I guess as far as even a year back, I would have felt bad that people could feel that way and even more badder (is there a word called badder?) that I would agree with them and put myself down. But I guess we mature as we age and certain statements don’t matter, be it in seriousness or in jocularity. Why? Because we know ourselves better than anyone. There was that small question that came out with its horns though, “Do I really make so much noise?”. I am still searching for the answer 🙂

– There were some who felt that my presence was missed because of the absence of my voice. Made me smile and think that my voice was being felt more than my presence is :-).. Made me wonder – should my presence be missed or my voice? Or should neither be missed as life just goes on, with or without us in this world?

– The words of children I was interacting with, made me go all emotional – “Take care”, “Get well soon”, “What did you do to lose your voice?”, “I want to argue with you and I miss the arguments, so get well soon”, “Talk properly soon”. What is it about children? One moment, we think that they are troublesome and the next moment they can display a sensitivity that just overwhelms you!!

This ‘quiet’ situation, gave me a few things to learn from..

– Not all that we want to say, needs to be said..

– It is good to hear what other people have to say, and respond ONLY with what needs to be..

– By saying ONLY what needs to be said, we give ourselves time to process on the thoughts that we need to ponder over..

– There was so much quietness because of NO clamoring internally, to talk or to share.. This gave me my ‘me and my time’. Oh and am I loving it!!

One question that came to me during this time is keeping me on my ‘thinking toes’ – “Am I so comfortable in hearing my own voice, that I need to keep talking to people?”. I don’t have answers to this question yet but I know that I have become comfortable with my quietness. A comfort that is so soothing.. a quietness that becomes constant..

Life is a blessing truly!!!

 

 

 

 

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