We live in a world that is increasingly being dominated by sound. Not by silence, not by those reflective moments, but by sound. Continuous white noise punctuated with other forms of sound.
So think to yourself, when you first awoke this morning, what was the first sound that you were aware of? And I would hope perhaps it was the twitter of birds, birds that you perhaps would hear on a bright spring morning.
And then perhaps you would hear the pulse of your home. Every home has a sound, doesn’t it? You awaken, you go into the kitchen, perhaps you make some coffee, you grind the beans, you hear the water percolating, making the coffee.
Perhaps somebody is making breakfast, grilling some eggs, you hear the sizzling sounds, all very comforting, for sure. So how do we designate sound, actually? Well, I think sound itself has to be broken into three broad categories.
The first one, perhaps, would best be described as positive sounds. How would one say? The sphere of, perhaps, the good and the natural.
And those were sounds that I just described. Then after you have your breakfast, you return to the bedchamber, you put on your clothes, you can hear the rustle of the fabric, return to, perhaps, the bathroom.
Look at yourself one last time, brush your hair once again, and then proceed to the front door. You hear the creak of your shoes, you open the door, and then you’re off to your car or to your scooter.
And then you come to, perhaps, what one could call the industrial sounds, as I like to call them. The duty-bound sounds, right? Things that you must access to get through your day.
So you get on your scooter or drive your car to an office. Along the way, you can hear the whistling of the wind, you hear the radio, perhaps playing some music.
You arrive at the office, you park your car, slam the door upstairs to the office, you open the door, and you proceed inside.
And in the office, you get the familiar voices of people greeting you, a secretary or your colleagues, and the banter is quite pleasant. You’ve begun your day.
And I think most of us proceed on a daily basis in these two areas of sound, the initial sound, which is quite positive at the beginning, and then you have, of course, the duty sound, as I was just referring to.
But what seems to be increasingly intruding into our lives is the negative sound.
So pundits say, whatever you do for the first hour or two hours of the day, do not turn on your phone, do not look at your phone. Why not? Well, a lot of social media, of course, is audible.
YouTube, news reports, everything. So you’re actually hearing sounds that are not good for your psyche at all, and they’re inculcating you with negative thoughts. Terror, if you will.
The world is on fire at the moment, supposedly. Wars are everywhere, which suggests that human civilization is well on its way to destruction.
And then if you listen to any news reports, you also hear the news going on about perhaps the traffic accidents or some environmental catastrophe.
I listened the other morning to the BBC News, and of the 18 news reports, 16 were what I would describe as negative or pernicious. They didn’t benefit me at all. And I think we’re all the same.
So these kinds of noises, we want to avoid like the plague because they don’t help us. And yes, we want to be informed about the world. We have to know what’s going on, of course, but we have to put everything in context.
Now, if you were a 16-year-old person and you’re listening, of course, to the negative news, it’s much more dangerous for you because you have no context at all. You don’t really understand history, you don’t really understand the society you occupy.
You’re just in school and you’re listening to all these dark forces around you. And you puzzle because you’ve never been shot, you’ve never been stabbed or blown up or experienced that kind of tragedy that’s described.
There’s a disassociation with young people. I think it leaves the great sadness. I taught a class once, and a young woman essentially said to me that the world is going to end, and I had to ask, when?
And she said, what do you mean, when? I said, well, you’ve just said the world’s going to end. Is it today, tomorrow, in a week?
And she didn’t think it was funny, but I was trying to be somewhat humorous, of course. But eventually I did win her over by saying that the only person who can change the world is you.
And that begins with changing yourself, your attitude about life. Because life, in a sense, has no purpose at all, does it? Really.
Unless I give it purpose, there is no purpose. And many people don’t give their lives purpose at all. Inevitably, they grow old and they suffer because life seems to be a rather bland experience, not punctuated with a lot of joy at all.
But that’s not life.
So how am I going to find these positive sounds to make my life more botific? I must get to nature as much as possible. David and I, my walking partner and I, were just on the Matsu pilgrimage for ten days.
And that was truly an extraordinary experience, because around 400,000 to 500,000 people supposedly are involved in the walk, and you’ve never seen so many people.
So you’re struck with the crowds, but then you’re also dumbfounded by the kindness of people, because you are pro-offered water and food continuously, continuously on this walk. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.
And for a society that supposedly is so concerned about money, this is a time that nobody is concerned about money at all. They’re just concerned about extending kindness and helping you on your pilgrimage. Nobody questions your religious motivation.
They just feel that you’re doing something that’s worthwhile. So we must return to the natural environment. The people in this context are certainly part of that environment, the natural environment.
And then the second thing we must do is we must be more deliberate with our actions. So when we awaken, I was listening the other day to a rabbi, and he was saying we should spend five minutes just catching the sounds of the day.
Sit on the edge of the bed and closing our eyes and just listening, just listening to all of those sounds, some of which we alluded to earlier. Capture those sounds. So be deliberate with that five minutes.
Be deliberate when you brush your teeth, shave, have a shower, put on your clothes, whatever it is. Be deliberate and catch the sounds that are associated of course with time.
And then, the third thing is to listen to the sound of you, of your heartbeat, of your breath, of the way you approach life, by the way you say things to people.
Are you the sounds, are the sounds that are coming from you, are they gracious sounds, or are they fearful sounds, or are they anxious sounds?
Now, certainly the sounds that are filled with peace and love are the sounds that are going to have some harmonious linkage with the universe, if you could put it in such a way.
Because as this white noise grows in our society, this white noise is increasingly not at all positive. Not at all. And if you go back, I would think, let’s say a hundred years to my grandparents’ farm.
I mean, you had a lot of beautiful sounds, didn’t you? You had the birds twittering, the sound of people working in the field, some laughter in the distance, children would be playing, cows would be mooing, I guess, etc.
So these were very pleasant sounds. So I guess the point here is that with these three categories of sound, we must think to ourself that we want to ideally make them, whatever they are, make them positive.
So all sounds, ultimately, we should attempt to somehow forge an ending to the day when we’re closing the day with positive sounds, maybe with prayers or whatever it is, just to close off and end the day in a positive sense, because sound is with us
from the time we begin the day until we close the day, and we certainly want to live a positive life in this context. And you know what they say, you know what they say, critical thinking is everything, especially when you’re trying to listen to
sounds, hopefully positive sounds, and critical thinking is great, truly great. You take care. God bless. Bye-bye.