Deaf in a loud world

The world is an out-of-tune instrument, a lute with quite a few broken strings.

In a big city with nowhere for the noise to go, it hits me the way a spotlight hits a stage.

It disperses, yet still, it feels as though it focuses on me — alone.

The sound is invasive because there’s only one way for it to go: in my right ear. The left side of my body seems acoustically dead, haunted — like an abandoned house.

I can only hear one way; the noise has no location; it’s just a single approaching wall of pressure. I can never tell if the danger — or the person calling my name — is in front of me or already behind my left shoulder.

I am weighed down; my right side is the heavy part of a scale, and I am desperately searching for the balance of peace.

The sounds — though physical vibrations — always demand a lot from me.

I hear the beeping of a car almost like a signal of danger on the sidewalk — a decision I need to make. The scream of a baby reminds me that I haven’t eaten.

Adults talk amongst themselves, approving and disapproving. I cannot seem to hear anything that puts my mind at ease. Their voices were dissonant, strident, conflicting, and raucous against each other. They were overlapping, different, yet all sounded so utterly dissatisfied. Maybe I am the one who is dissatisfied.

This harsh discordant mixture of sounds was nothing but a labyrinth of beliefs. Here, the noise transforms into doctrine. I try too hard to outpace inadequacy; that is why the sound out there — the city’s doctrine — sounds so strident and demanding.

One voice lists its goals like an endless bucket list, signaling my fight-or-flight response because today I have not done enough to be a part of that crowd.

The ‘bucket list’ was a constant, blinding flash of a camera phone in my peripheral vision, documenting a life I must prove I am constantly living.

The belief that one must always be climbing turns every conversation into a job interview.

This is the labyrinth where the conflicting signposts pull me apart like a ball of yarn, my ends straining in two directions: one escaping into a quiet cafe, and the other dipping behind every shadow, searching for a corner to hide from the judgment.

The quiet cafe felt like home — kind of. It offered me the clinking of a glass — soft music to shut out the shrill arguments in my head.

Yet, it was never enough.

I was still around people whose expectations and goals kept their minds always soaring high beyond the clouds, fueled by ambition and fear of inadequacy.

I understood then that temporary quiet was not peace.

I needed something static, something with a different kind of intelligence, whose growth has already stopped.

I needed to be beside the tallest tree that had nowhere left to go, no need to aim or strive. Its entire history was held perfectly within its rings, between the barks and through the resin. Its wisdom was absolute. The tree is bound by gravity, unlike us, whose minds keep soaring high beyond the clouds. The tree's peace was rooted in the acceptance of its own weight and its own boundary.

To truly step away from me, them, everyone, I had to walk past the cafe and toward the forest.

What fell away was the constant external chatter, and then, slowly, the memory of them.

Like broken glass, I still heard it, faint then loud then faint again, until I was deep in the woods.

Then, the noise and the memory of the beliefs started to fall like noiseless leaves.

I found the sentinel I was seeking.

The tree stood bare, its leaves fallen, allowing things to happen.

It was the antithesis of the bucket list: rather than constantly moving, changing, and aiming, the tree had already found its place in the world.

It cannot be rejected or kicked out of where it stands.

I stood there as still as the tree.

I listened for its fundamental truth, which held no signposts, no job interview, and no endless list.

I hear one note. The only way I could describe it was that it did not graze my skin to enter with heat and curses. It wasn't the sound of command, but of simple existence. It fluttered and was light about me, like a phantom butterfly. The heavy right side of the scale released its pressure, finding equilibrium with the silence of the left.

In the forest, there were no spotlights.

Everything was equal.

There were no beliefs, just harmony.

Everything was still and patient.

Everything had peace within it, because the noise here wasn’t urgent.

I felt balanced on my right and my left. The scale was finally level.

I could not say I charted a finished journey, but a tracing of a path only I could follow.

The world will always blare into my heavy right ear, and the alluring, but harmful song of ambition will always try to break my internal yarn.

But now, I know where the silent ground lies.

I search for peace. I search for that which is unchanging. I search for the knowledge that beneath the discordant mixture of human beliefs, a deep, rooted stillness exists.

My singular hearing may always focus the noise, but the memory of the ancient tree ensures I now always know the direction of the quiet, the place where I cannot be rejected.

A/N: my comments, reply’s and shoutouts, will be on pause for a while. If you got this far, thank you so much for reading. 🤗♥️🙏🏽🖤