Megaphones, ears and silence – missing pieces in a circular puzzle

The larger world and our individual turf within it have become frantic, stress filled environments. The assault never ceases. We’re bombarded by unwanted sounds, from the warning beeps of vans and trucks backing up, the ring of cell phones in public places and the gabble and babble of their oblivious users, the clang, rattle and thump of garbage cans being emptied, the blare of radios, i-pods, and whatever else has replaced walkmans, the beeps of microwaves, ovens, cars, clothes dryers, security systems being turned on or turned off, the wailing of alarms on parked cars lightly brushed in overcrowded parking lots, strident raised voices in confrontations of every description, constant television as background noise, baby sitter or empty entertainment. The world is a megaphone on steroids.

Is it any wonder we’ve been dumbed down? Is it any wonder so many people seem incapable of rational thought? Is it a surprise that when we cry out in anger or discontent or loneliness no one hears? Is it a surprise that conversation is a lost art? Will our ears eventually become as physically useless and unnecessary as our appendix, a residual organ ignored until it ruptures or grows malignant?

The argument could be made that we are all still in infancy when it comes to listening. As babies and young children trial and error teaches us that when we yell or cry or throw a tantrum, mom or dad or someone else comes running and directs all their attention toward us, seeking to make whatever bothers us go away. We grow up expecting to be the center of attention, to be heard, coddled, or eased. Yet, we rarely learn to listen – not to others, not to ourselves and certainly not to the silence that could give us respite and relief.

Listening – really listening – takes effort and concentration. It also takes practice and can be harder work than we’ve ever done. So much tries to grab us, to subvert our attention, to sell us cars, cosmetics, legalized drugs, fast food, a political agenda or something else either bad for our well being, or presented as essential to our image of ourselves and our competition with others. Most often, the product is something we neither want nor need. What we actually hear during these times is only superficial noise, an overlay of the huckster’s come-on, because we can’t process what has really been said. We don’t know how to listen.

We’ve become so attuned to the presence of empty promises and noise that we’ve learned to fear silence. Our ears detect an emptiness and we panic, too flooded with adrenalin to listen and realize that silence does not mean devoid of sound – the sounds that could comfort and help us learn about ourselves because they encourage us to explore what we think and how we feel about what we think. Silence can gently take our hand and lead us to introspection, it can release memories we hardly remember we have, it can stimulate awareness of the energy of life all around us, it can create understanding of our worth and purpose in the immediate and broader world. It can offer a promise of ease when the megaphones of this modern world once more intrude and deafen our minds.