I had a comically bad day yesterday, like dropping things, almost lost my keys down the drain on the sidewalk, spilled soup at the store near a makeup section, almost tore my pants, got back from the store only to find out I was out of TP, etc.
It was more funny than anything else, like so much random trivial bad luck in one day is like something out of some 90s Tom Hanks comedy.
But there was one thing that actually annoyed me - on my way back from the store on my grocery trip, my phone suddenly went from a healthy 7% to 0% and died. I was stuck with no music for the remainder of the walk back.
Soooo I was forced to listen to the sound of well - nothing at all basically.
Just birds chirping, wind blowing, leaves rustling, all as I walked the same path I walk all the time and see the same things I’ve seen hundreds of times, just waiting to get home.
Don’t get me wrong I love where I live and everything, it’s a really cool city with good pedestrian infrastructure, I almost never even get close to a car and it’s not some smelly euro village either, but seeing the same things I’ve already seen and having no stimuli at all, it wasn’t that big a deal but it was unpleasant.
That got me thinking - I sometimes see folks not wearing earphones outside, and I’ve heard on more than one occasion from some acquaintances that they don’t listen to music outside, and I wonder - why’s that?
Why would you choose to do that?
And, what do y’all like, do, exactly? How do you deal with the monotony of your grocery trips or things like that when you don’t even have music on? Do you just never get bored of walking the same roads/neighborhoods w/e day after day?
It’s good to enjoy quiet and not be constantly surrounding yourself with noise. It’s an important skill to be able to sit in silence and not rely on external stimulation to feel okay.
Quiet? Nice but almost impossible thing: cars, humans, dogs, children, sirens, bombs… All produce an enormous amount of noise.
That’s true. But finding inner quiet is an even more necessary skill in those situations. But, I’m autistic (only mildly), so I totally get if the stimulation is just too much. Though I went through a lot of discomfort to be okay in environments like that.
Yeah sure, and I do have that skill, and it did take some time to develop it when I was growing up as my parents never ever turned the TV off, but obviously I’d prefer not to have to use it. What I don’t understand is why someone would do it by choice.
It stops taking as much effort eventually. Then you can tune out the noise and think about stuff. Or it never does because everyone is different, I guess, but then you just do what you have to do.
Fair enough.