In the flow of listening

I’m lucky enough to be able to spend a good amount of time both in the city and the countryside. One of my rituals when I’m in the countryside is to take my dog out in the morning and walk with him along a little path, to a small stream, where he sniffs around and looks out for any deer that might be on the other side. I stand next to him, listening to the water. Spending a few minutes doing this in the morning gets me into a good state of mind for starting my day. 

I get the most out of this when I make a conscious effort to listen closely. It’s easy and pleasant enough to have the general sound of the river in my hearing. But once I consciously pay close attention to the sound of the water, I start to hear the detail and then the sound of the stream opens up to me. It stops being a single sound. I start to hear small and then larger differences - a constant rushing sound where the water flows fastest, rhythmic higher-pitched gurgling noises where the water runs through a series of small rocks, and the bass of occasional plops as some of the water drops from a higher and shallower, to a lower and deeper part. Sometimes there is also the soft sound of rain drops falling on the leaves above me. 

I was reflecting on why, every morning, I have to remind myself to listen to the stream consciously and attentively – it’s not something that just happens. And I realized it’s because most of the time, I’m doing the opposite - trying to filter sounds out. This is particularly so in the city - New York City – where the only way to live among the near-constant sirens and trucks and jackhammers is to learn to unconsciously block them out as much as possible. 

Then I started to think about how much of my time each day is spent just filtering out noise of all kinds. For example, the first thing I do once I open up my laptop each morning, even before I start reading emails, is delete the many unwanted ones that are cluttering my inbox. Then there are the constant pop-up boxes on websites, and the notifications on my phone…

With so much noise, everywhere, all at once, all of the time, there are so many good reasons to tune out, to ignore, delete. And often, even when I do want to open up, to take time and extend my listening and focus, there are so many other things clamoring for my immediate attention that I often end up putting it off. I have to regularly remind myself to make the time and space, to put in the effort. 

It’s a bit of a paradox: the filtering out is unconscious and seemingly comes naturally - but it’s taxing and depleting. The listening and focus is intentional and takes conscious effort and intent, but always leaves me feeling relaxed and refreshed.

(On the topic of focus and intention, I appreciated Gunnar’s fascinating piece on the sloth, the Greenland shark and the benefits of slowness.)

If you want to take a listen, here’s some sound of that stream, right under the picture.

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