Noise

My four-going-on-forty granddaughter recently told her mother: “I don’t like it when people put noise in my ears.”

I love this child to the moon and back. And she is spot on here. We are inundated with noise of all sorts at varying decibels. Sirens, alarms, pings, music, videos, movies, conversations – it’s a very long list. It is increasingly difficult to find silence.

We all have heard the warnings about distracted driving, for example. Most of that distraction? Noise in one form or another. Voluntary noise. Noise we choose. Even distraction from choosing noise, e.g., changing our playlist while driving.

We require silence. Noise and distraction are huge dangers to our mental health, our spiritual well-being, and ultimately our physical safety. Silence restores our equilibrium and quite frankly our higher brain functions. When we move away from fight or flight responses from our primal brain stem functions we make better choices. We actually MAKE choices, not just respond to stimuli.

We need to stop choosing to let others put noise in our ears. Or in our eyes. Or in, especially, our hearts. Noise is not just audible honestly. It can be whatever is a distraction.

I am consciously making choices about what I allow. For example, I turn off almost all notifications on my phone, and keep it on silence. I only allow visual notifications. Yes, I regularly miss phone calls. I’m frequently slow replying to texts. I’ve had to learn to be ok with that.

The silence is worth it. Responding versus reacting slows down my life and keeps “people from putting noise in my ears”. Silence allows me to think and process and heal and quite frankly connect back to God.

How are you protecting your ears?