Shhh……. Listen…..

For the next one minute, just close your eyes and listen.  Count the number of distinct sounds that you hear….. Did you pick out anything new?  Did you pick out anything you have not heard recently? A moving car? A chirping bird? Shuffling of papers? A child’s chuckle? Running water? Foots steps? A rumbling stomach? Laughter in the distance? A barking dog? A wailing siren? A chiming clock? A ticking watch? A cough? A beeping cell phone? Clinking of cutlery?

We are all probably familiar with the expression – stop and smell the flowers. In our twenty first century world, where everything moves at breakneck speeds, we are often too rushed to be sufficiently aware of what is going on around us.  With all the technology that we have built around ourselves, we have created numerous humming background noises that drown out the rest of the world and we have lost the value of our sense of hearing. The five common senses are our bodies’ tools for interaction and connecting with the world.  Recent developments in information technology have resulted in an overflow of information and an also resulted in a competition among the senses around which sense is used to bring in more information.  As a result, most information now comes to use through the eyes.  We read newspapers, phone messages, emails; we even watch television in mute mode and read the transcripts, because we have submitted to a dominant background noise.  We read more and listen less.  We smell less and taste even less.  And with the definition of personal space, we touch even less.

Besides connecting with the world, the five senses are also meant to help us connect with ourselves.  While we have built all these alternative ways of connecting with the world through visual text, we have not built any ways of connecting with ourselves.  With time, we have lost our self-connection, our self-awareness.  When I grew up, my mother would retreat to take a nap and say that she needed “to listen to herself”.  By stepping back every so often and letting all our senses reach out, our bodies respond by expressing themselves to be “heard”.  You “hear” your digestive system turn as if to confirm that it is present and on duty!  You feel a sensation on your skin as if it acknowledges your attention.  The hairs at the back of your head stand and confirm that they are still part of you. 

In his various writings, Eckhart Tolle talks about being present in the now, which is about total self-awareness on a present continuous basis?  The beauty of it is that anyone can achieve self-awareness.   They only have to stop and “listen to themselves”.  Besides the heighted awareness for self-awareness’ sake, listening to yourself will make you happier and healthier.  Having your body in constant self-conversation will improve your body’s ability for self-repair and maintenance.  Listening to yourself will make you appreciate yourself and your environment, rediscover the parts of your environment that have been drowned out making you more at ease.

So, next time you find yourself in a noisy, rushed, tired, stress state, just stop, and listen…… to yourself.

The Pursuit of Equality

I recently watched with amusement a CNN documentary talking about Brazilian women footballers complaining about the low profile, respect and recognition they receive as women compared to their male footballer counterparts.  The documentary referred to a period in Brazil’s history, in the period under military rule, when it was illegal for women to play football in Brazil and by implication how sexist Brazilian football is. I am not sure anyone – male or female – doubts the might of the Brazilian football legacy and this article pricked for the nth time my curiosity at our human unending pursuit of equality.

The pursuit of gender, racial, generational, etc. equality pervades our daily lives in the current generation. Equality is a mathematical notion that is defined by the Oxford English dictionary as the state of being of the same quantity, size, degree or value.  It further defines equality as being of the same status, rights or opportunities, having uniform application or effect without discrimination on any grounds.  Even at the plain mathematical level, equality is merely a notion for explaining our world.  The only thing that is equal to two is two.  The fact that we notionally accept that one plus one is equal to two does not strictly mean that they are equal.  The only thing that is equal to one plus one is one plus one.

In social application however, the notion of equality has been used to manipulate society to create an unreal world.  The fact that we have created equality laws, in itself, confirms that equality does not exist in nature.  If it did, there would be no need to define it in law.  There are no two people in the world who are equal.  Even twins, who are genetically similar, and usually grow up in the same environment, are not equal and develop into very different unequal entities as they go through life.  The pursuit of racial equality assumes that people of the same race are themselves equal and therefore extending the same equality to other races.  In the same way, the pursuit of gender equality assumes that all people of one gender are equal and they are therefore extending the equality to the other gender.  I find this to be not only manipulative, but also unreal and intellectually dishonest.

By extension, the notion of equal opportunities assumes that given the same opportunities, everyone will make the same (good) use of the opportunities.  A casual glance at how we use our time will tell you that we will never be equal.  How you use your time and opportunities today determines the opportunities that will be available to you tomorrow.  Allowing people to throw away time and opportunities today and guaranteeing them the same opportunities tomorrow seems to me to be absurd and unsustainable.  We need to recognise and appreciate that history has seen different peoples use time an opportunities differently and that this has put them at an advantage in current times.  We need to recognise and appreciate that even today, different peoples are using time and opportunity differently and this will put them at an advantage in the future.  This is happening within and among races, genders, generations etc.  There is no law in the world that will force equality so long as this different utilisation of time and opportunity continues.

I submit therefore that our pursuit of equality will continue to be a mirage, as long as people expect to invest less in time an opportunity and expect to reap more or equal to others.  Back to our Brazilian women footballers – I doubt that they will get equal respect, attention, or recognition as the Brazilian male footballers – even if they create a law to decree as such.  I however expect that they will cut a much higher profile than women footballers from other counties, mainly because of the (unequal) profile that football cuts in Brazil, thanks to the historical lead developed by the Brazilian (male) football legacy.