Echoes I Did Not Answer

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Echoes I Did Not Answer

There are traditions that arrive like the morning sun—inevitable, warm, and full of ancestral glow. Passed through gestures more than words, these customs once painted my childhood with hues of incense, chants, whispered prayers, and silent reverence. And yet, as time advanced like an impatient tide, many of these rituals were left resting like unopened letters at the threshold of modernity. This is a reflection on the traditions I did not carry forth—those tender inheritances that faded into memory, like fragrances long dispersed.

The Slow Vanishing of Ritual Time

I recall how days once revolved not around the clock but around the bell—a brass clang marking morning offerings, the lighting of a lamp at twilight, the aroma of sacred herbs dancing with the wind. There was a serenity in repetition, in the cyclic cadence of devotion. Now, in the hurried pace of contemporary life, where dawn is chased by deadlines, that sacred slowness has grown rare. The lamp sits polished, perhaps admired, but often unlit. Not out of disbelief, but due to a misplacement of priorities. Time, once a sacred ally, has become a hurried taskmaster.

Songs Unsung and Seasons Unmarked

There were songs sung not for entertainment but for alignment—with the seasons, the stars, the harvest, the rains. These tunes tethered one to the soil, the skies, and the stories of the land. I no longer remember their exact melodies, only that they soothed the tired heart. Festivals, once anticipated with weeks of preparation, now arrive as mere calendar entries—reminders, not revelations.

There was a rhythm to the seasons, and with it, a harmony of action—fasting not for weight loss but for inner clarity, abstaining not as denial but as an honouring of cycles. Those meanings now lie like ancient scripts unread, covered by the dust of convenience.

The Language of Reverence

There was once a language of greeting where hands met in humble prayer, not just in gesture but in spirit. Today, communication is abundant, but connection feels thin. Reverence, once the bedrock of every interaction—with people, trees, animals, and gods—has turned performative, or worse, forgotten. The bow of the head, the silence before a meal, the gratitude before a journey—all were quiet rituals of belonging. Now, they flicker like candles in the wind of modernity.

Philosophy Now Muted

I was raised amidst metaphors, where rivers were goddesses and trees were sages. Philosophy flowed not from books but from everyday observations. A fallen leaf, a crow’s call, the steady flame—they all meant something. The world was a text to be interpreted with the heart. But slowly, that instinct to philosophise has been shelved, replaced by facts and figures, analytics and outcomes.

In this forgetting, something more than customs was lost—perhaps the soul’s compass, which once pointed not north, but inward.

Yet, Not All is Lost

To admit these absences is not to dismiss the past, nor to grieve it beyond repair. The spirit of tradition, I believe, is less about duplication and more about essence. Though the outer forms have faded, the inner yearning for meaning remains. I may not perform the exact rituals of old, but I seek their spirit in quiet meditations, in the turn of pages from wisdom texts, in the silent acknowledgement of dawn’s beauty or dusk’s mystery.

Perhaps traditions, like rivers, change their course yet remain rivers. Perhaps what I lost was not the entire ocean, but the shore I once stood on.

A Whisper to the Ancients

To those whose footsteps I no longer exactly follow: I have not forgotten you. I carry you, not in practice, but in pulse. I may not recite the same hymns, but I look at the stars with the same awe. I may not light the same lamp, but I yearn for the same light.

And so, while some echoes have gone unanswered, I still listen. I listen deeply.

The lamp may sleep, the chant grow faint,
The sacred thread now loose and quaint,
Yet in my heart the fire stays bright,
A quiet flame in modern night