Listening.

The world hums along all day, all night. But do I really hear it? 

Of course I hear many things around me everyday. We all do. I hear the news on TV or music on Pandora or the latest episode of Netflix. I hear my neighbors hammering, the gardeners mowing, car honking and planes flying overhead. 

What I also hear is the sound of my own thoughts, not silence. Oh, it might be silent around me but what I’m listening to is that critical voice inside my head talking and talking and talking. 

I want to stop hearing and start listening. 

I tried it this morning before I got out of bed, I laid there and listened. Somewhere a dog barked. A bird chirped. Tiny squirrel feet scuttled overhead. There was a buzz somewhere in the room which I’d never heard before and no it was not a bee or a fly. It’s the speaker for the TV which seems to make a high pitched noise even when the TV is not on.  I found out, I can turn it off, when I did, something inside me breathed a sigh of relief.

So many things inside and outside I may hear, but clearly I don’t listen. I don’t take the time to stop and just take it all in. And maybe, that’s ok. Because there’s so much noise in and around us all the time, taking every noise in would be overwhelming. But on the other hand, maybe it’s a matter of choice. 

Tuning out to tune in. 

Obviously, there are things I need to tune out. My TV sound bar is one. The drug commercials on TV. Lawn mowers, leaf blowers, shrub trimmers are not fun sounds but neither is my non-stop mind chatter. It’s time to work on tuning out that voice, too. 

Maybe the best way to tune it out is to tune in. Let the world in by listening. Even though I hear many things all day long, they don’t connect me to the world. Not the living, breathing, organism that is our world.

The chirps. Crinkles. Scuttles. A whoosh of the breeze. Sound is a language all it’s own and this beautiful world is speaking to me and you all the time. 

Now I need to do more than just hear it, I need to be really listening.