Sshhh.

"Hence it comes that men so much love noise and stir...hence it comes that the pleasure of solitude is a thing incomprehensible." 

- Blaise Pascal, Pensées - 

When I stopped running to slow my rapid and ragged breathing, I grew aware of the noiselessness of my surroundings. I was gloriously alone in the blooming quiet of morning. No loud voices punctured the film of nature's whispers. The rough edges of the humdrum of coffeehouses and dorms and classrooms and rehearsals and hangouts were smoothed by forces more organic. It was like escaping from a stuffy room into crisp air, realizing that before that refreshing moment every breath had been inhaled in a stale atmosphere. I thought back to the Spring, to how I hadn't felt the full extent of the intensity of life in East Jerusalem until I'd left it. Going from noise to quiet was like that.

I drank in the new silence like it was an elixir for a withered body.  

What lovely, mentally cleansing and clarifying activities are the acts of walking alone outdoors, savoring silence, dwelling in solitude, appreciating stillness, listening with rapt attention to a soft voice. 

Sometimes this makes re-attuning oneself to the drone of constant activity and noise that much more painful; sensitized ears are more acutely aware of how loud we actually are. 

Maybe this isn't the most even-handed generalization (if there ever is such a thing) to make when living in a dormitory on a college campus, but...

Americans tend to be LOUD. 

(Note to self: subdue your ear-piercing laughter). 

From our courtyard-facing window, we overhear every aspiring musician strumming over-zestfully on his ukelele and robbing us of precious sleep in the late hours of the night, every rendition of Lady Gaga hollered at remorselessly high decibels. The entire dorm is subjected to certain individuals' screams and squeals (why does anyone feel the need to literally shriek out a conversation?!) and alternately heated and disconsolate phone calls (we are all now privy to the details of your family, personal, fiscal, and relationship problems). How difficult would it be to keep your window closed to muffle the obnoxious bleeps and rambunctious reverberations of your video games and action movies issuing endlessly from your room? And, honestly, not everyone appreciates having their studying bumptiously accompanied by country music or impassioned jam sessions of repetitive (dare I say Christian?) music. Pianos keys don't necessarily need to be pummeled like some kind of obstinate construction project. After one morning when someone's alarm in a room across the courtyard rang for a full sixteen minutes with metallic, xylophonic ascending scales before finally being turned off (I timed it, bleary-eyed but irreparably awake), one of my roommates moaned from her bed, "Whoever that is...if we were friends before, we aren't anymore."

I found myself wincing recently when my friend raised her voice to speak over the racket of the radio on a car ride...when I realized my hearing had been temporarily impaired by an excessively loud college chapel service...when members of the basketball team violated the sought-after sacredness of the 'study' lounge by playing inane YouTube videos and guffawing rowdily, apparently impervious to the scowls and cleared throats of their disgruntled peers and ostensibly oblivious to the fact that other students had attempted to retreat there to actually get some work done.

But what bothers me most about all this is not necessarily the noise itself, but the fact that an individual's or group's loudness evinces a blatant unconcern for others in the vicinity -- a thoughtlessness that is, frankly, invasive and rude. 

These observations about American loudness are not just a product of experiences at college, but also from abroad. 

Almost immediately when we were adjusting to daily life in Istanbul, we noticed how the Turks approached and respected public space in an entirely different way than we were accustomed to as Americans. 

In Turkey, subway commutes and public buses were usually fairly quiet. No one spoke too loudly (anyone who does was usually an oblivious and inconsiderate American tourist), if at all. In days upon days of observing people on ferries, buses, shuttles, and the metro system, I was fascinated by how, in the few times when someone's cell phone caused a disruption, the grimaces of fellow commuters quickly nudged the offender back in line. There was a sense of shared space, of commitment to the common good to be found in making daily commutes more bearable for everyone. Because of this, people spoke softly, tread with subtlety and a certain culturally-impressioned respectfulness of others. Calling attention to oneself, in certain contexts, seemed thoroughly selfish and daft. 

I thought back to times when I'd ridden buses in Seattle and San Francisco, how I usually ended up sandwiched between someone gabbing away on her cell phone and someone whose iPod earbuds were turned up to such indecently high levels that I might as well have had them in my own ears. In the States it often seems like everyone is so keen on asserting his or her own 'individual' personality and demands (as if entitled to some unquestionable human right) that any perception of how others are being greatly encroached upon is entirely forgotten or unsophisticatedly overlooked. 

Observe who and what is around you. Think before you brazenly impinge your conversation or musical tastes upon someone's mental and aural space. Evaluate whether or not you need to be speaking so loudly. Learn to enjoy solitude and silence and stillness. Only after much listening and observing can we make sound instead of cacophony, music instead of dissonance.