The bell waits. Silent and cold, it sits on the shelf, a humble object, often overlooked. Yet, its potential is vast. It holds a meaning, a power beyond its material form. The moment my hand reaches for it, I can sense that power—the anticipation, the readiness. In this simple object lies a rich world of symbolism. The bell, once struck, is a voice of time, a harbinger of change, a signal of transition. It is more than a tool—it is a threshold.
When I lift it, I feel the weight of its history. A bell has always been more than sound. It calls to prayer, it marks the end of a cycle, it rings in the hour of reckoning, it signals a beginning or an ending, births and deaths. The bell vibrates with all of that. As I bring it down to strike, time itself seems to pause. There is a sacredness in the moment before sound.
The first note rings out, clear, sharp. Its sound pierces the air, and I feel the ripple move through me, through the room, out into the world. The bell breaks the silence. And in that moment, it feels like it is announcing something far greater than itself. The bell symbolises awakening. It jars you out of the everyday, pulling you into the present. Its sound lingers, reverberating through my bones, like a memory refusing to fade.
Each strike of the bell echoes both an end and a beginning. I can sense it now—how deeply embedded this sound is in rituals and rites, how it calls forth something ancient within me. The bell marks transitions—each toll reminds us of time passing, yet it also marks the present, pulling me into awareness of now. It is a bridge between worlds, between moments. As it rings, I am thrust into this liminal space, where the past and future meet, where what was silent becomes heard, what was dormant comes to life.
The bell carries the weight of mortality. It rings at funerals, calling us to acknowledge what we’d rather forget—that we are finite. It marks endings, the final breath, the last heartbeat. Yet, in the same stroke, it rings for life—births, celebrations, awakenings. It brings me to the edge of these opposing forces, death and life intertwined in each reverberation.
As its sound fades, I feel the shift within me. The bell has rung. There is no going back to the silence of before, not in the same way. It changes things. Its tone lingers, reminding me that every moment is a transition. Each toll is a reminder that time is passing, that we move through the world, leaving echoes behind us.
I place the bell back on the shelf, but it is no longer just a tool, a simple object waiting for my hand. It has become a symbol, deeply ingrained in my psyche. It is the voice of transformation, of transition. It holds the paradox of time, of life and death, of silence and sound. It represents awakening—the call to consciousness—and the inevitable journey we all undertake.
In this space, I am not just the bell’s keeper; I am the bell. I embody its purpose, its transitions, and its calls. I am the silence before the sound, the vibration in the air, the quiet that returns afterward. And in that immersion, I see myself—constantly moving between the known and unknown, between birth and death, awakening and forgetting.
The bell holds this tension, this symbolic weight, reminding me that life is full of such moments—brief, powerful, reverberating long after the sound has faded. The bell’s symbolism is not separate from me. It is me. And in its ringing, I remember.
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