By Teodros Kiros
Silence is enigmatic. Silence speaks without speaking, hears without hearing, and sees without seeing. On the surface these enigmas are contradictory. How can silence hear without hearing, and see without seeing?
Those contradictions are the essence of silence.
We cannot see silence seeing, nor can we hear it, hearing.
Silence is silent because it has heard; silence is silent because it has seen. Sometime silence sees too much and hears too much; that is when silence remains silent.
Ever since the historic voices of the people were heard and seen in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen and now Libya, the Ethiopian landscape is environed by silence. You must be wondering what the people are thinking, what the people must be saying. Keep on wondering, because have determined to remain silent, for they think that silent is golden, or they may be secretly listening to Fortuna, to that moody teacher of time.
There is wisdom in this silence, in this stillness of time, when the mind is at its most active condition, when the mind is thinking about when and how to act.
The Ethiopian people have seen without seeing, heard without hearing, but they remain steadfastly silent. Perhaps, they have seen and heard it all. Some are still mourning the deaths of their beloved first in the hands of the Derg and now in the hands of the existing Tyrannical/Oligarchy.
Do not let the silence of the people disturb you. Great actions are always preceded by long periods of reflection during the stillness of time, when time is borrowed by deliberation, by public reason.