As I wake up, the car noise that one can never fully escape begins its daily assault on my mental health. Actually at night, I can hear souped up motorcycles going at high speeds on nearby highways. I guess the cyclists want everyone within a hundred miles to know that they are driving big, powerful motorcycles.
Outside this early morning, I can hear the honking of hundreds, possibly thousands, of frustrated drivers on Metropolitan Ave in my Kew Gardens neighborhood, which is located about 15 miles away from the center of New York City. Many of these drivers are in emotional overdrive. They are trying to get on the Jackie Robinson Parkway or the Grand Central Parkway, but there’s not enough lanes.
(Why don’t these benighted souls heading for a nervous breakdown avoid this traffic mayhem and use mass transit? The latter has its own mayhem formula since it is run by the government. Actually, it is not directly run by the government. Instead it is operated by a government authority, the MTA. That’s because our ruling pols—most of whom rarely ride mass transit—find ways to avoid taking responsibility for the parlous condition of government trains, buses and just about everything else under government direction. Generally, the only time you’ll see them on the trains is when they’re running for re-election).
I eventually leave the house. Unfortunately, this is one of those rare days that I must go to Manhattan. I head to the subway stop on Queens Blvd.
There’s not enough subway trains coming—in part because the system, especially its signal system, is outdated—so the trains are jammed. When trains come into the Union Turnpike stop, the wheels are squealing. The trains often shake. One must hold on because the recoil can be dangerous and can turn human beings into missiles. The brakes and wheels feel as if they are not being properly maintained. I think this is because that is what a motorman friend told me.
Recorded PA announcements are not only ear splitting, but are often inane. One is invited to go to the MTA website and look up obscure MTA regulations. And yet, despite all this noise and stress, there are people who, I suppose, like it or it doesn’t bother them. Some seem to add to the noise.
I sometimes sit next to people whose head phones are so loud that music is leaking out and I can hear it. I can only imagine the noise level that is blasting into these peoples’ consciousness.
I remember once I received a walkman twenty years ago. I like classical music and I like listening to ballgames sometimes when I am out walking. The first time I tried it, it was so different from using a radio. If you set the volume at a reasonable level, you can half listen to a radio and it will not blast your brains out. But the walkman was so much more intense. You can walk alongside someone with a walkman or headphones, and he or she can be in his or her own universe and will not notice you. I discarded the walkman and went back to the radio.
Better than that, many times I walk in the forest without any oral stimulation. I just enjoy the quiet and think. Thinking in quiet! What a concept in New York City or almost any big city in 2015. The preference for noise, for turning things up as high as they can go and then some, is taking over our society. It is a plague that is being willingly embraced by millions of people who think quiet is a curse word. They seem petrified of the idea of sitting and thinking.
Anytime you go to a major sporting event these days, you experience it. Recently, I went to Citifield, the home of the New York Mets. I arrived about two hours before the game since I’ve always loved seeing batting and fielding practice. The video board at Citifield—which here, as in most stadiums, is huge, like the monster portions of food that many fans eat at the ballpark as though they were eating the last supper—-constantly rocked out music, commercials and announcements.
There was hardly any time—not before, during or after the game—when the video board wasn’t going and going. I guess during pitches it actually shut up, but not between pitches. I don’t blame the owners of the teams for this celebration of racket; this ode to anarchy. This is obviously what they think most of their customers want. And they’re probably right.
But have you ever considered what constant exposure to noise does to the average person? Will we be experiencing the mother of all class action lawsuits a few years from now when a generation of middle-aged people complain that they have lost all or most of their hearing? How does the noise and more noise idea affect a person’s ability to think? To reason? To solve problems?
When one stops the noise and just thinks, remarkable things can happen. Test your reading speed when there is mayhem around you and test it when there is quiet. I believe you will find the latter is much higher. Test your ability to do a difficult task—with me it is learning French, a language, unlike Spanish, that I find difficult—when there is noise and no noise. I believe this idea can be extended to relationships.
Have you ever had an argument with your significant other when you were both in a stressful place? And have you ever discussed the same trying subject in a pleasant, quiet environment? Again, I believe the latter will produce much better results. You are much more likely to be rational and find solutions to sometimes seemingly impossible problems.
I believe the wisdom of the philosopher Blaise Pascal needs to re-discovered. He famously wrote: “All of man’s misfortunes come from one thing, which is not knowing how to sit quietly in a room.”
As I sit quietly I think, Amen, brother!
