Silence

This evening, we watched a little bit of the Remembrance Celebration from Albert Hall. It brought my mind back to yesterday morning at school. It was announced to the students that at 11am we would be taking part in a National Minute of Silence.

At exactly 11am the bell rang, signaling the beginning of the minute of reflection. I was in the hallway taking down a display, to put up a new one and I could hear the bellows of a church bell, echoing down the hall and the pull of a canon reverberating around the room of a class I was next to as the teacher showed her students the BBC coverage of the event.

As I stood quietly, I looked into a classroom across from me and watched students sitting motionless, most with their heads bowed. Here it was, this one moment frozen in time, no one moved, the clanging of bells, the shot of a canon, and as suddenly as it began, the stillness ended with the ringing of the school bell. The halls filled with the noise of children, of chairs being moved across the floor, the sound of footsteps filling the once quiet hall. Life came thundering back  to the building, as it should have done.

That is what men have fought for, isn’t it? For life, for freedom. That is what we should all fight for in our own small way everyday, for life and for the freedom to live it. Thank you to all the men and women, past and present,  who make that possible for us, everyday.

(Image found here)