What We’re Losing – Part I

Most of us feel like we’ve come such a long way in our lifetimes in terms of progress,
innovation, comfort, convenience, and many other means that make our lives easier, more
organized, and, well, better. I agree wholeheartedly that I don’t miss listening to music on
an old transistor radio or turntable. I don’t miss having to use white typewriter correction
ribbon every time I missspell something in a dokument. But I do miss many things that
used to be the norm or the expectation in society. Though it may be true that progress and
advances haven’t necessarily been the root cause of things we’ve lost, I think in some
cases they’ve contributed to our losses. Many of you won’t remember the time we had
certain norms, expectations, and understandings in society, particularly if you’re less than
30 years old. And many of you won’t even care that we’ve lost some things because
you’ve grown up without them, so you never knew any differently.

Maybe I’m just getting old (all too true) and nostalgic. Maybe I’ve just finally become
that crusty old curmudgeon I’ve always aspired to be. Or maybe there really are some
subtle or sublime things in life that are now, to varying degrees, things of the past or have
faded over time.

Now I don’t want to suggest that WE have lost these things completely. I also know it’s
dangerous using such an inclusive term – WE – because when I use the term in regard to
something WE’ve lost, maybe YOU aren’t in the WE; maybe YOU continue to avoid
being part of that collective WE.

Certainly, a piece like this will create some animosity and argument. It’s quite likely I’m
wrong in many cases. I’ve always been an optimist, but maybe the pessimist in me just
has to have its say every once in a while, or maybe I’ve just gotten a bit too intimate with
Hobbesian philosophy over the years.

In order to bring some organization to this piece, which will likely require more than one
blog, I’ll try to put things in categories, wherever possible.

Reflection, Peace, Simplicity, Quiet

Part I of this blog on What We’re Losing will focus on some very simple things:
reflection, peace, simplicity, and quiet. Again, I want to be cautious of implying that
these ideas are gone, for indeed they are still valued in some cultures and in some places.
I also remind myself that not everyone devalues these ideas, but it appears to me that
society, in general, has moved away from these concepts that have so much to offer to us
individually and collectively in our world.

Reflection

Reflection may be more a personal loss for me, as opposed to a general loss to our culture,
since I grew up in constant need of time for reflection, but take so little time to do so now.
In general, though, I think we’re all so busy constantly doing something – even if that’s
something as inane as watching television – that we rarely, if ever, take time to do
nothing. Time to just sit and think. Time to just let the mind wander freely. Time for
reflection. It’s such a foreign concept, I’m not even sure many of us know how to do it,
since we tend to feel so driven to be doing something. The whole idea of actually setting
aside daily reflection time is totally foreign to many people.

Peace

We typically think of peace as the opposite of war. But the peace I’m talking about here
is a personal inner and outer peace. It’s a sense of oneness with one’s self and with the
world around us. So many things work against us in achieving this. We’ve got internal
struggles like addictions, contradictions, motivations, image, and the like. We also have
external battles, such as relationships, work pressures, financial challenges, and so on. All
of these wage war on achieving peace in our lives.

When I was a teenager, I frequently ran on our neighbor’s farm property. The trail took
me along wheat and cornfields, and there was a long stretch that lined the perimeter of a
forested area. I found peace after a run sitting on a rock pile at the edge of the forest. It
was a sensory feast; the smells of the ripening wheat and the forest foliage, the visual awe
of the glistening wheat and the myriad shades of greens and browns in the forest, the
auditory concert of wind through the trees, rustling grain, nesting birds, and other forest
critters. Personal challenges and external issues dissolved and melted on that rock pile.
Some days I really thought that I had solved all the world problems. I could easily pass an
hour on that rock pile. I was at peace with myself and with the world. Whenever I’ve
needed a sense of peace in my life over the past 40 years I try to find time to allow myself
to be mentally transported to that rock pile. Everyone should have a rock pile in his or her
life.

Simplicity

Again, the world in which we live is working against us here. There are still some rogue
soldiers out there that battle the culture and refuse to be compromised by succumbing to
complexity. I think many cultures and locations in the world are really on to something in
their struggle to keep life simple. I remember spending two nights in a remote village
high in the Swiss Alps. It was a collection of a dozen farms or so, a church, a couple
public buildings, and an inn. As I ran through the peak-rimmed village on a chilly but
pristine morning I was struck not only by the quiet and the peaceful solitude, but even
more so by the simplicity of life. It’s almost as though nothing moved, or what did move
did so very slowly. The most pervasive noise in the village was the distant clang of
cowbells worn by the cows in the fields. I thought to myself “These people are really on
to something. I could do this.” Of course, I couldn’t actually do it, at least not for more
than a few days. At that point I’d be in some freaky-eyed state of withdrawal from not
having access to all the technology, toys, disruptions, and distractions that I rely on daily
to make my life complex.

Life in the sixties and seventies, during the time in which I grew up, was simply less
complex. We had three TV channels, no video games, no technology to mindlessly amuse
us for hours on end. We created our own fun. The operative word here is “created”. We
used our minds to create fun and entertainment. Or, if we wanted to keep our lives really
simple, we read, made music, played family games, or quietly sat and watched the
sunsets. Ahhhh.

Quiet

This is one of my most envied losses. And for me it truly is a loss. Quiet is something I
haven’t experience in well over 40 years, and I mean that seriously. As a youngster I was
exposed to an extremely loud and concussive noise that permanently damaged my
hearing. It’s called tinnitus, or “ringing in the ears”, and it’s been going on non-stop since
that dreadful day. Not a single moment of silence in over 40 years. Round the clock I
battle the incessant, and unceasing cacophonomy in both ears. So quiet is something I
envy. I constantly yearn for relief from noise, though, ironically, I’m a musician
surrounded by sound on a daily basis. I think we need moments of complete separation
from sound, though this is increasingly difficult in our loud world. Quiet moments create
a blank canvas, an opportunity for our minds to roam freely, paint pictures, score our own
soundtrack, or allow the brain to fire synapses and follow threads unfettered and
uninterrupted.

Ironically, though I lust for quiet, I despise it at the same time. When the world around
me is quiet it creates an environment filled only by the maddening ringing in my head.
The screaming collection of metallic dissonance fills the envied silence. It’s horrible for
me to be in a quiet place because the tinnitus then has free reign. As I age I continue to
move further and further afield from the world of external sounds due to ongoing
incremental hearing loss, so the background tinnitus has now become the foreground, and
the former foreground – the world around me – has now become the background. I’m
more and more distanced from the external world, while the internal world continues to
be filled with noise.

Silence. I think it’s necessary for our sanity. At least that’s how I hear it, if I could.