Our bodies speak volumes in telling us who we are. We need to communicate with the world out there. We have eyes to see, mouths to speak, ears to listen and noses to smell and breathe. Some of these – our eyes and mouth – have natural ways to shut themselves from the outside world. Our ears and noses are designed to remain permanently open. Is it because they are more crucial to our survival as humans?

The air we breathe is our life but so are the sounds we hear. What happens when these are polluted, distorted or even poisoned? Air and atmospheric pollution is a known and confirmed killer. Are we sufficiently aware of the lethal effect of sound pollution? Air pollution kills the body. Sound pollution kills the mind and the very soul of humanity.

It’s not just about our mental health that we’re speaking. That’s already a tragedy in itself. We’re fast becoming sound-bite addicts. Parties need to be drowned in sound so that the only way to communicate is to gesticulate, dance or drink.

There is a noise war on live conversation.

Ears need to be constantly plugged to some sound machine like the iPod, iPad, tablet, mobile, computer, radio and TV set.

Are we just shooting clay pigeons or again playing the fatal game of Russian roulette?

Are we so terrified of hearing a bird singing, the wind blowing, a leaf rustling or simply a husband, wife or child whispering his or her pain in our ears in a natural human voice?

To survive frustrating traffic jams that immobilise our glitzy speed-boxes for hours we can only seek refuge in turning up our car radios to shut out the din outside. In our ingeniousness, for lack of natural ear shutters, we have cleverly created and multiplied noise to shut out sound.

But what gives life is sound and what kills it is noise. Sound is indeed a source of life.

The friendship of an intimate conversation, the beauty of uplifting music, the subtle inflection of the human voice that expresses the infinite love of a mother towards her child, the music of a dancing waterfall or raindrops pattering on a rooftop, the whistling of the wind among the reeds. These are not simply noises.

These are life-giving sounds of the spirit within us – the sounds of our own humanity.

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience,” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said.

The tragedy of a misguided postmodern culture comes when it is so trigger-happy with its own brand of humanity that it starts shooting down anything that even resembles the spirit.

The pursuit of happiness becomes the pursuit of pleasure. The need for survival becomes a suicidal struggle for survival. Freedom becomes sheer permissiveness. Joy becomes expensive and demeaning partying. Celebrations become binge-drinking sprees. Leisure becomes the new idol. The economy becomes the sole life machine and money the definition of well-being.

Without minimising or disparaging progress, we cannot stoop so low as to adore it. We are first and foremost spiritual beings. This is what makes us human.

The cost of forgetting or ignoring this truth is all the loneliness, brokenness, depression, psycho-social dysfunction, family breakdowns, child abuse, political and commercial corruption, environmental and social degradation our society is unfortunately getting so much used to.

A ray of hope still beckons and invites us to rediscover our own humanity: spirituality. This is what we Jesuits, along with so many other religious and lay people from all faiths and from none, believe and work for untiringly.

Mount St Joseph is just one of several spiritual centres in our tiny country offering a helping hand to all those who are seeking how to survive the tiring, exhausting or soulless existence that seems to be the only option on offer.

We do not have the magic formula but we have a life-giving one: stop and listen to the whispering sound of silence within you.

For 50 years, we have been cultivating an oasis of silence where thousands have reconnected with the voice within them and found life.

Our culture has already targeted so many fundamental human values in our lifestyle, family structures, codes of ethics and simple civil behaviour among us.

We have just opted in favour of shooting birds out of the sky, right in their breeding season. Will shooting this oasis out of existence be another fatal blow to the spirit that makes us human, all in the name of pleasure, the economy and the financial gain of some?

Are we just shooting clay pigeons or playing, yet once more, the fatal game of Russian roulette?