#HushTag

Enter the hashtag! Nosebleed: “It is a metadata label extensively used by social networks and microblogging services. It helps users to fish concrete topics and trends within the vast oceans of the internet.”

Due to its widespread use over the internet, hashtag was finally added to the Oxford English Dictionary in June 2014. Despite this, I have never fully immersed myself in it. And my one and only attempt to design one sunk even before it could sail cyberspace.

Perhaps the only direct exposure I have to hashtags is through Twitter. Some time ago, I felt it would help to keep me up-to-date with the traffic situation, sudden extreme weather and geological forecasts. Now, I rarely bother to log in to any of these.

Recently, the hashtag caught my attention with the recent political goings-on in the country. I thought that such social media means are now the avenues for people to voice out their ideas and opinions in a new digital Areopagus. But given the nature of the internet, the absence of an authoritative arbiter can convert even the loftiest discussions into a boiling pot of Babel.

Enter the “hushtag.” My definition: “An internal reminder for the person to respect and observe silence by pausing, listening and keeping his spirit joyfully open to the truth in all and any form of human interaction.” I felt I was just forcing a pun at the beginning. However, as I mulled over it, I realized that it is always good to remind ourselves about the importance of hush, silence or space.

If machines require some slack time to maintain themselves and computers need zeros to calculate the most complicated problems, then man also needs hush before the continuous flux of information perceived by his senses in all of the levels of life. Without hush, man will lose one of the most important qualities necessary for his physical and spiritual perfection: contemplation.

The attitude of hush is an indispensable component for the person to discover his inner self in order to possess himself. Once he becomes more adept in possessing himself, only then can he can give the gift of self to God and others. The lack of hush implies one’s enslavement to external and internal distractions that do not help one to find himself integrally.

One of the best examples of hush is what we are about to witness and relive again: Christmas! By all standards of present-day marketing and trending, the very importance of the event is poorly publicized. There were no formal invitations and the venue was a manger not fit for a king and his guests. To top it all, we are barely updated about the Child-King’s life for the next thirty years or so. Bad advertising indeed!

The scenario continues even to our days. Every Christmas, and each time more, we are literally blinded and deafened by signs, songs and sales! We are told that it’s indeed a season for giving. And if you want to give, then you have to shop. And you had better hurry to shop now before the sale ends.

This becomes the cyclic materialistic frenzy that may imprison man every year and also through his entire life. It is man trying to foolishly convince himself that “life is worth living on the things of life,” forgetting that Life that he was meant to live. If he must escape, it can only be by embracing hush.

The first Christmas eve is a portrait and portal of hush. A portrait because we do not hear a single word pronounced. The shepherds went to worship and in silent awe adored the Child. The three kings came, with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, and on bent knee offered a silent prayer. Of Mary and Joseph… Hush, hush, hush! God’s Child is sleeping!

It is a portal of hush, as it invites us to enter and contemplate Silence Incarnate. God’s Word, once spoken in the beginning, is now silent in the Child Jesus. It is as if He were there only to listen to man, you and me, so that we can empty ourselves of the hush that fills our poor hearts and souls. A silent prayer. Amen.