Noise Pollution

Can you hear me now?  That was a tag line in a commercial a while back for a cell phone provider advertising their coverage area.  But it could also be a question asked because our world today is just so full of noise.  Living on a busy street in a big city, I hear music from cars, people shouting down the street to each other, barking dogs, wailing sirens, and the rumble of heavy trucks.  Going out and about, I hear music blaring in the stores, TV screens talking at the gas pumps, and the pounding of jack hammers at the numerous construction sites.  

The sounds of nature, the birds singing, the woodpeckers pecking, the rustle of fall leaves, get drowned out by all the sounds of man.  There's a stress that comes along with these sounds of man that can lead to people having short tempers, and bad dispositions.  It's a continuation of the stresses of the work day without a place to experience something different, something relaxing.  

I've spent a part of this year in a very different place than the big, busy, noisy city.  A trip to Acadia National Park in Maine, and a trip to the mountains of North Georgia where the Appalachian Trail starts provided that something different...and I enjoyed the quiet and the calm and the tweets of a different kind.  And I'm trying to bring just a little of that back into my everyday life, to hear the world around me rather than let it be lost in a cacophony of sounds. 

Perhaps we'd all take just a little better care of the world around us, and of each other, if we could hear the sounds of our world just a little more.