Uncomfortably Loud

I can’t stand the noise any more.

The noise of public transport. Cars speeding, honking and drifting. The noise of people shamelessly sneezing, coughing and spitting. Their loud footsteps. Their shouting while talking on the phone. Social media and its meaningless trends. YouTube advertisements and the fake voices of these fake people called “actors”. The masses protesting something new every day, or something old I don’t much care anymore. The noise of smugness and pride and the know-it-all attitude of today. I can hear people typing maniacally. I can hear the repressed grumbling behind every angry comment on every social media post. All experts on politics, economics, geopolitics, religion and everything else there is. I can practically taste the hypocrisy. It disgusts me.

Every single day I know what to expect.

I shut the front door, take a deep breath of fresh morning air and off I go. Birds are chirping and the wind howls. That’s a new! Not for long. The whistling tram invades the immediate soundscape and the first irritation of the day is right on schedule. Inside the tram is no different. I don’t really wish to have my headphones on in public anymore - it’s a habit I’ve grown to detest - but sometimes it’s either Rossini’s Thieving Magpie or some poor interloper’s newly invented genre of noise. It’s all so deafening it makes my skin crawl.

“Perhaps a bit too cynical there, John”, I hear you say? Perhaps. Writing about it makes me realize that. Maybe I will end this on a more positive note of gratitude and humility.

I was tempted to name this piece “late night confessions” but I decided not to add pride to the list of vices. It’s in moments like this that I feel trapped, like a mad horse with nowhere to go. I can’t escape artificiality, not completely. I have neither the means nor the freedom to do so, which is why I love going on hikes by the way. It restores my individuality. I no longer feel like an extra sound in the cacophony of everyday life. Then again, the silence is short lived. Unless it is deep in the forest or high up the mountains I always expect to hear the faint sounds of the bustling nearby city or the buzzing of a plane.

Being this sensitive to noise has its perks as well. I can pick up sounds that mix wondrously and do not not impose anything. Sounds like the echoing footsteps inside a dimly lit church. The squeaking of wooden doors. The mild conversations of the elderly. The joyful voices of little children in the town square. The crackling fire inside a busy but cozy street cafe. The pleasant sound of pages turning as a young woman reads a book. The strings of the violinist and the shy applause of the crowd. Couples laughing and holding each other by the waist. Birds fluttering to the sound of bells. Dogs trotting on the street. Whispers of prayer.

Many are the things that serve no functional purpose and yet fulfil the most important purpose of all: inner peace. I suppose resentment and anger is one option when it comes to the current state of our world, but they serve no purpose at all; they serve only the master whose purpose is to kill ours.

There is plenty to be mad about. Even more to justify us going insane. But there is infinitely more to be thankful for. I see that now. When surrounded by an ocean of meaninglessness it is all too easy to lose sight of the few things that imbue our lives with meaning. Life is infinitely beautiful, down to the smallest and most seemingly insignificant detail.

How can I find peace as the greatest spiritual war of our time rages on?

Pause and listen. His voice will guide you to the light.

“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains.
It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
— C. S. Lewis

A part of the wall crumbled with a terrible noise by Virginia Frances Sterrett, 1920

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