It’s been noisy recently. Distractions in all forms pulling and blurring focus.
Yesterday afternoon, determined to continue songwriting, I entered the peace and comfort of our backyard. Seated in the refreshing autumn air under waning sunlight I drank in clear skies, brilliant blossoms, vibrant new growth in shifting seasons.
Closing my eyes to softly clouded heavens I began to pray.
In came the piercing brackish crack of glass, breaking. My eyes flew open, staring toward the source of noise, an arrhythmic cacophony of blunted shrieks as the pane was pummeled, shrinking shards. The grand finale: An abrasive concerto of grinding squeals as the dangerous rubbish was forced across the concrete.
Noise.
I closed my eyes again, picturing the shimmering glitter left behind to glint in the dusk.
The tinny, predictable lilt of a children’s lullaby lumbered by as an ice cream vendor passed on the street.
Noise.
“How am I supposed to write songs in this sonic nightmare,” I wondered.
Noise.
Noise is all around us: Things that cause disturbance or interference, particularly disagreeable sounds.
We may find it in our emotions when we become upset; health when we aren’t fully awake or well; entertainment when we actively or passively read, watch or engage in foolishness, or even in the what’s-it-really-gonna-hurt-ness; relationships when we spend time with those who yank us off-course; thinking when we let our mind fall into self-defeating lies about ourselves or others.
Noise is in what we drink that intoxicates us or eat that slows us; where we stand that blocks us, holds us back, or just doesn’t propel us forward; what we do that binds us or sends us backward or sideways. How we hear, not letting the truth be loudest. What we say, not letting goodness be shared.
Noise.
Why allow it to disturb your peace, to interfere with your purpose?
When you know who is really in charge, who you are, and what your responsibility is, there should be no space for noise in your life.
You eliminate noise by:
- Understanding how unlimited your choices are by remembering always, who is in charge. In God there is no lack, no weakness, no failure, no confusion, no unwillingness, no inability, no fear.
- Thinking about your options with your responsibility in mind. Your days are not random, unimportant, frivolous, unseen, and never-ending.
- Choosing what you let in based on who you are. You are not faceless, anonymous, untalented, unloved, unanticipated, unneeded, unknown, unaware, irresponsible.
With a noisy background, you have to burn precious energy and time to be able to listen to what you wanted to hear.
There will be times when the lesson and growth of enduring, struggling forward is imperative.
There are also times when you apathetically let the noise settle and just keep the volume way up.
Having the volume too high for too long is disorienting: It drowns out important ambient noise you need to discern your environment and respond accordingly. It’s damaging: Eventually the tools you’ve been given to listen wither from abuse and you can’t hear anything.
You aren’t meant for confusion or dysfunction.
Allowing noise to exist in your life forces you and everything else to conform to it. To be molded and formed around something that by definition, is disturbing and interfering.
Why force your life off-cycle by lazily accepting disturbances and interference as background noise? Why make life harder than it is meant to be?
Just turn it off.
Tina Watkins Quaye 