Listen with your ears

Finally a Friday I could spend lazing around at camp, away from work – doing absolutely nothing. A time to relax and cool down. As I lay on my bed not willing to rise, I kept my eyes closed and let my ears exercise its senses. What did I hear? I could hear…

• The air-conditioning running with occasional sound of the compressor cutting in. Not only mine, but other neighbors as the entire UAE is now droning with air-conditioning running 24hrs a day.
• Water dripping from the leaking shower in my bathroom. It has been leaking since day one and repaired once. But it just keeps on leaking. Water is wasted in this water-scarce nation.
• Kittens purring. The mother cat of the camp has just given birth to a litter of kittens and they like to hang around under my cabin during the day time.
• Birds chirping away happily unperturbed by the hot weather as they dodge around in the shades of the trees.
• Myself breathing – inhaling & exhaling. Breathe in… breathe out. The sound of life.
• The sound of email coming into my inbox. I’ve kept my laptop switched ON through the night. My inbox has been very busy nowadays with emails running around UAE-Malaysia-Germany-Italy. It’s hard to imagine a world without internet nowadays. We held ransom by this technology!

The ears are always under-utilized. We tend to keep it closed to sounds and voices that we do not want to hear. There are always background noises that we miss out in our hurried life. But if we just sit down a moment, close the eyes and allow our ears to do its job it’s amazing how much background noises escape our attention at other times.