I live about one mile from Interstate 85, inside the I-285 Perimeter. There are massive thoroughfares that pass next to residential housing. Along the way, GDOT has placed noise abatement screens, metal or concrete. For residents in those areas, those screens help. My house is upstream, off a tributary of the North Fork Peachtree Creek. Although there are numerous trees in-between, it is not unusual to hear the din of city traffic, especially under certain weather conditions.
Many urban buildings, especially churches, utilize acoustical engineered structuring inside the building. These products reduce excess noise and enhance clarity. Leonardo da Vinci made significant contributions to the science of sound, including understanding of sound waves. Modern technology fine-tunes such studies to adjust to audience size and seating arrangements.
With politics, geography, industry, population, and, well, cell phones, noise increases exponentially– inside our heads and outside our bodies. Our very soul silently screams for noise abatement. So, how do we turn off the noise? We can’t. And don’t want to. Not entirely, anyway. It’s like having a baby monitor that could disturb your sleep. Yet you will not turn it off, because a tiny life depends on your hearing their distress signal.
There are ways to manage noise, that ubiquitous noise you can’t/won’t turn off. Physical barriers aside, noise inside our heads must become the focus of our journey toward noise abatement. It may very well require physical adjustments to your environment and actions including meditation, deep breathing, or listening to music.
Back in the early 1960s, a Meme became immensely popular. You’ll remember GIGO — Garbage In Garbage Out. The same goes for our brains, a point well taken by James Allen:
Every thought-seed sown or allowed to fall into the mind, and to take root there, produces its own, blossoming sooner or later into act, and bearing its own fruitage (fruits) of opportunity and circumstance. Grandmother Veal often said, “You cannot help it if birds fly over your head. You can, however, prevent them from nesting in your hair!” Simply stated, my grandmother was sharing a mantra for life — while we may experience temptations, we should try our best to resist them.
©Copyright Willis H. Moore 2025