Silencing The Static

There are days when I just can't take the noise.


“Sometimes I wish I was deaf,” I said to my brother one night. I wasn't being literal. When I'm around my brother, I tend to spout off things I don't actually believe, just so I can see in which way he might respond.


“Yeah, I know,” my brother replied, excited. He spoke with enthusiasm, as if he had been waiting for years for someone to bring up the subject. “Sometimes I even wish I was blind!”


His honesty and exuberance took be by surprise. Is this really something that people desire? To lose their basic senses? Are there people out there who feel enslaved by the echoes in their ears, the reflections in their eyes, or the tactation in their fingers? This is certainly something I had never considered before.


As the days went by, however, I finally realized what my brother meant.


I sat there, pounding away on my keyboard late at night. I'd been awake for the last twenty hours. Early that morning, I woke up to finish writing a pointless news story, staring deeply into the bright computer screen in an otherwise pitch-black room. Then I drove off to do my other job, where I ran data on a computer – again staring into the bright screen. I came home that evening to check up on the internet and watch some T.V. Again, bright screens. And now, here I was, trying my hardest to be witty with Microsoft Word but my eyes just couldn't take the stress. I slammed my laptop shut and pulled out my notepad. You're a writer, I thought to myself, so actually write something! My eyes relaxed, my thoughts opened up, and all order was restored in the world.


Sensory overload is a problem I face everyday. In the era of the iPhone, it's so easy to become constantly engaged with our electronic devices. It wasn't freedom from the senses that my brother was beckoning for, but freedom from the shackles of the things that constantly beg our attention. Sometimes I don't want to give my attention to anything. Sometimes I wish I was immune to the ringing of a phone or the ever-changing and increasingly portable flash of a screen – screens that come equipped on any and every one of the numerous electronic devices the common American has on hand at any given time.


 “Sometimes I wish I was deaf.” But not deaf to the world. Only to humanity – to both its vices and devices. But when the outer-world cries my name, I will always welcome its homely call, for who has ever lost sleep over a the rhythmic patter of a drowsy spring storm? Who has ever cursed a mountain sunset?