Sometimes I have been in a place that is almost absolutely quiet – without even the distant sound of traffic or of human voices.  It is an increasingly rare experience and an eerie one too.  It is, I suppose, a bit like being in outer space.  Even though no place is absolutely silent, being in a place where one can hear only the subtlest of sounds is an otherworldly experience.

Quiet is otherworldly because it is so rare.  That it is so rare is unfortunate.  Except for those who live in remote places, we rarely hear the pulse of the natural world because it is drowned out by the cacophony of man-made noise, much of it unnecessary.  We talk too loudly because we are accustomed to competing with a background of din.  How often can you hear every word of a conversation fifteen feet away when the speaker is addressing a person scarcely two feet away?

It is not just that the machinery of civilization – vehicles, construction equipment, power tools, and the like – are noisy.  It is that we are.  It's a habit.  Although the yelling of children in the enthusiasm of play is natural and understandable, we make scant effort to teach children to use "little voices" in everyday conversation.  Habituated to two levels of speech – loud and louder – they converse like hearing-impaired people, unaware of how unnecessarily loud their voices are.

We even abuse music, which is supposed to be a pleasant auditory experience.  I am not here engaging in a traditional rant about rock music.  I refer to the "background music" that is played in virtually every public place, although hardly anybody listens to it or even consciously hears it.  Instead, it is one more noise against which we raise our voices to compete.  It is no wonder that movie theaters play soundtracks as loudly as they do, for the sheer volume is such that it discourages talking during the film; we would have to shout to make ourselves heard and understood.  (That some people still try to do it is something I won't go into here.)

People exert little effort to be quiet – or quieter.  They virtually scream into cell phones and play car stereos loudly enough to be heard a block away.  Women's heels clack on wood or vinyl floors, teenagers exchange greetings that resemble savage war cries, and men roar at raunchy jokes when an appreciative laugh would be sufficient.

Accustomed as we have become to public noise, we carry the habit over into private places.  We are uncomfortable in the absence of distinguishable sounds.  I understand that, in most American homes, the TV is almost always on, whether or not anyone is watching (or listening to) it.  Some people go to sleep almost every night with the TV on and wake to it in the morning.  Such individuals, I suspect, are almost always within earshot of human voices almost every waking minute.  This is not to say that they listen to these voices, only that the voices are within hearing distance.  Perhaps one of the reasons we are such poor listeners is that we have become accustomed to hearing without listening.

I am a rare duck, I suppose.  Because I'm retired and my wife still works, I spend a large portion of every day at home alone, yet I feel no compulsion to have the TV or radio on.  Unless I'm in the mood for music (which, incidentally, I do enjoy immensely), I don't bother with it.  Nor do I ever feel the urge to call up somebody on the phone just so I can hear another voice, or make some fairly meaningless noises of my own.  I confess that I do sometimes talk to the cat, but she is even more adept than some people I know at hearing me bit not listening to a word I say.  And I appreciate her all the more because she never utters a sound except when she really wants my attention and thinks that what she has to "say" is vitally important.  I wish people were more like that.

One of the reasons I like the very late night and very early morning hours is that they are quieter.  The sounds of civilization dwindle to an almost inaudible hum.  It's as if I can almost hear the world around me drifting off into a relaxing sleep.  This is the best time for writing or thinking.  Even when I have been awake for most of the day and should, by all normal measures, be physically and mentally exhausted, my brain seems energized by the relative quiet.

It is, in fact, something of a mystery to me that I can think at all straight in noisy places.  Perhaps my belief that I do is an illusion; I may be thinking straight only in comparison to everyone else who is trying to think in the midst of distracting din.  Perhaps, too, the world is as crazy as it is – and becoming crazier – because we are attempting to use our brains in a noisy world that is becoming noisier.  It is something to ponder, in the relative quiet of the hours between midnight and first light.