It's a Noisy World!

               Silence has become an important part of my day.  Spending three days away from home helped me to realize how little I interact with the “world” in my daily routine.  While enjoying a few days of work in Chicago, I found it difficult to find silence.  The trip began with an early morning plane ride. I had planned to catch up on the sleep I lost by getting up at 4 pm to get to the plane.  My seat with next to a group of colleagues who were traveling together and they talked the entire flight.

               My walk through Mid-Way airport was punctuated with music that filtered throughout the terminal. As I entered the hotel lobby, my eyes were drawn to the large screen TV that was placed over the reception area. Later that day, I wanted to do write, but the bed in my hotel room was inviting, so I brought my computer down to the lobby.  The volume on the TV was so loud, that I couldn’t concentrate to write.  

               I met a friend at a restaurant that didn’t have a large TV or music!  We enjoyed a two hour dinner sharing our family stories and professional challenges.  The final event of the evening was a chance to meet my brother who just happened to be in Chicago, just five blocks away from me.  I arrived in his hotel lobby early and pulled out a book to read, only to find the volume on the TV, even bigger than the one in my hotel lobby, to be too loud to concentrate.  After my brother arrived I asked if we could turn the volume down.  Much to my delight, the bartender turned it off, saying that he was tired of the non-stop talk too!

               The weather didn’t cooperate.  I had hoped to take my computer to Grant Park and spend an hour or two writing.  The cold, rainy weather meant I needed to be inside. I spent parts of the next day working in a coffee shop and finally left when my head hurt from too much noise.  As I walked through a number of stores on the Magnificent Mile, I wondered at the idea of having TVs in all kinds of retail stores.  Does that help the shopping experience, or does it distract people from making purchases?

               Much of my time was spent writing in my hotel room where I had wonderful silence.  During the visit, I ran across the following quote by Kierkegaard:  If I could prescribe just one remedy for all the ills of the modern world, I would prescribe silence. For even if the word of God was proclaimed in the modern world, no one would hear it; there is too much noise. Therefore create silence.

               At the end of my trip, my husband picked me up from the airport.  I got into the car, gave him a kiss and turned off the radio.  He looked at me puzzled and I just smiled and said, “Let’s enjoy the silence”.