I have always liked silent mornings. I like the idea of my body and thoughts getting ample space to stretch out before they submit to work and the internet. Over the last month and a half, I’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy this oft-romanticised-but-rarely-claimed tranquility. The only external sound I hear with my coffee these mornings is the ambient chirping of sparrows. On some days, these birds are accompanied by the distant breaking of waves on the beach. None of them are new phenomenons, but the sense of time itself stretching out in front of you gives them significant weight.
Time and space often come at a premium, don’t they? While lazing through one of these days, it hit me that I had often taken them for granted. Through a perpetual cycle of trying to do something or get somewhere, I had formed this itchy-hand habit of looking for motion in my life. Now when I look back, my thoughts and actions were almost comically distant. I would wake up every day, take an extra second to go through my morning routine, before, invariably, the watch would command me to pull myself together and get ready for work. On weekends, I would get restless if I found myself spending too long without a pen, paper, or the piano.
This isn’t necessarily a philosophical take on how we all need to appreciate nature - I don’t think anyone needs a blog post for a reminder anymore. It’s just that when everyone is home, when every car and motorbike is parked inside a garage, then all you are left with is nature. The rustling leaves and chirping birds on them form the background score to your day, and I’m here to tell you that it’s bloody beautiful. So much that I haven’t felt the need to have Spotify on play at all times. My screen-times are lower than ever and those beanbags feel useful again.
In other facets of life too, I have enjoyed the stillness in some form. Sport, as we know it, has been paused and there is a deep concern about the return date because the prospect of thousands of fans crammed together in a stadium isn’t very appealing right now. Even though I can’t wait to have it back, I cherish the respite from the relentless chatter it generates. In sports, objectivity of opinion is a utopian idea because fandom itself hinges, to a large degree, on reverence and dogged defence. Before this radio silence took over, I hadn’t realised how tired I had become of hearing every walking athlete, of any competence, to be called GOAT; of seeing streams of deeply biased opinions glide through my timelines every time I opened social media. So, until it is absolutely unavoidable, I think I appreciate not having to hear about how Virat Kohli or LeBron James are the greatest things to have happened to mankind since the invention of Doner Kebab.
Do I feel guilty about this, though - this idea of taking a pause and talking about the calming beauty of stillness during times so morbid? I’ll admit to struggling with it initially, but over time, I have made my peace. We are the products of our circumstances, and there shouldn’t be any remorse attached to finding pockets of happiness in times when every external pleasure is inaccessible.
Life will, sooner or later, be back to the older definition of normal; time and space will again be at a premium; and we will, again, crave for silent mornings.
Edit: A couple of days after publishing this, I picked up The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom. You absolutely must read it if you have ever looked at the watch and rushed to get something done in time, or mourned lost time when something slipped away too quick.