Flow State

I have officially reached the age where my number one enemy is noise.

It’s the dark side of my love/hate relationship with Chicago. Sometimes I love this city, but Christ, it is relentless. It’s the diesel trucks groaning on the highway. Yesterday, it was some guy on a motorcycle in traffic who apparently felt the entire gridlock needed to experience his exhaust note. It’s being under the L tracks at the exact moment a train rumbles overhead, vibrating your teeth out of your skull. It’s the sirens, the unnecessary honking, and the cars with aftermarket subwoofers tuned to a frequency that literally rattles my windows.

You’d think a high school classroom might offer a brief sanctuary. You’d be wrong.

Today was the last day with students. In between periods, instead of letting us enjoy the impending sweet relief of summer, the administration decided to blare music over the intercom. It wasn’t just music; it was tinny, screechy, and turned up to eleven. It was actually physically painful in my ears. Combine that with hundreds of teenagers yelling over the din, and my central nervous system was ready to check out.

I am just so incredibly, profoundly tired of the noise.

In fact, I am so desperate for a break from the auditory assault that I did the unthinkable today: I skipped a workout. I pushed the training block to tomorrow for the sole purpose of going straight home to sit in my backyard and read. “Quiet” in a Chicago backyard is relative, of course. I’ll still hear the hum of traffic and the neighbors’ lawnmowers and trains in the distance, but at least it won’t be actively assaulting my eardrums.

It’s times like these where the siren song of Utah gets incredibly loud – or rather, incredibly quiet.

When we’re out there, the silence is a physical presence. Granted, we live near a major road, so if you’re sitting outside, you can hear a faint hum. But usually, the ambient bubble of the hot tub drowns it out, and the second you step inside, the world goes completely dead. No sirens. No people blaring bad bass from a Honda Civic. No commuter trains shaking the foundation. Just stillness.

The irony in all this is that, as I get older, I am systematically losing my hearing.

It’s a documented fact. It’s the main reason I started taking ASL classes and why I still spend time watching sign language videos every single day. But here is my dirty little secret: I’m completely fine with it. People ask if I’m going to get hearing aids, and my answer is a hard no. Why would I pay thousands of dollars to turn the volume back up on a world that won’t shut up? I don’t want to hear most of what’s going on out there anyway.

I don’t need to hear the intercom, the traffic, or the motorcycle guys compensating for various life shortages. I just want the world to be still. And if my ears want to cooperate by fading to black, I’m happy to let them lead the way.