It is interesting to consider that we live in a time when pretty much everything around us has an on switch of some sort.
Even when things are supposedly "off' there's still a pervasive background hum.
I sometimes like to get up early in the morning because it's quiet, but on closer reflection how quiet is it really? There is always that efficient hum of the refrigerator and somewhere there are fans operating inside equipment that's on standby even if we think it's actually switched off.
True silence doesn't really exist anymore, does it? And the absence of "connectivity" is a thing of the past...
Because we live somewhat "out in the sticks," during the winters we will have fairly substantial storms following up on heavy rains and the result is frequently that we lose power... sometimes for as much as 12-24 hours at a time. Occasionally, that loss of power is also accompanied by losing cell connection because the power outage is likely to have affected the nearest cell service booster tower.
It's interesting to notice just how substantial the silence is when everything is actually off as compared to what we normally think of as quiet while the electricity is on.
Personally, I really enjoy the silence... because perhaps I grew up during an era before there was nearly as much "always-on" equipment as we have today.
Surprisingly many people in younger generations — in this case I'm talking about the generations of our kids, who are all in their 30s — get extremely uncomfortable with the kind of total silence and disconnectivity we occasionally experience here.
The silence is almost... scary.
Even when I was back in my twenties and thirties I used to really enjoy visiting my auntie's house in the country, because it was in a remote area and she really didn't have much in the way of electronics in the house. The house itself would be quite still because both the freezer and the main refrigerator were plugged into circuits that were out in the garage. Since the house was heated by fireplaces, there wasn't even the hum of a heater going on.
All we really heard was the ticking of a mechanical clock.
Things are different in the world now. We have grown so accustomed to this state of being constantly connected that we often don't know what to do with ourselves when that connectivity goes away, and the electricity prevents us from streaming news and movies and shopping.
Keep in mind that I'm not necessarily talking about anything social here, when I use the word connectivity. I'm talking about simple things as pulling out our phone to get a simple question answered via Google, or checking in what the weather is going to be like before we get in the car and drive out somewhere where we're going to take a hike.
We take these things for granted but we didn't really have access to them just 50 years ago and somehow we survived just fine.
We didn't worry about people to the same degree we do now, either. If I were driving across the country to visit relatives, I wouldn't be in touch 24/7 checking in where I was along the way, it would just be assumed that I was okay and I might make a phone call from my overnight stay at a hotel room just to say that I had arrived safely in the next town but that would be about the extent of it.
But that's just one kind of noise we live with these days.
One of my habits that puzzles quite a few people — especially those who are somewhat younger than myself — is that when I am reading a book during the summer I will often go and pull up a chair outside and sit somewhere away from the house because it is simply quieter there than it is to sit inside the house where fans are going and refrigerators are running and phones occasionally ring and what have you.
I really like the quiet!
Sometimes I even take a small backpack and my book and I will hike about a mile down the nearby beach (where there's no easy beach access) and sit on a log and read my book for a while. Somehow it is not about not being interrupted but about the overall sensation of being uninterruptible.
Of course these days — because I'm getting older and not as strong as I once was — Mrs. Denmarkguy insists that I do take my cell phone with me, which probably makes sense.
Still, it makes me ponder how we ever survived at a time when there were no cell phones to take with us and we would just go to the beach and people would rely on us to come back when we said we'd come back.
One of the things many people learned during the Covid lockdown period was that they really don't like to be alone with their thoughts. Personally, I have always preferred to be alone with my thoughts. And I have no problem being in a situation and a time where I have no external input other then the sound of birds and waves.
But for many folks, sitting with those "internal dialogues" with nothing else as a distraction is almost like a form of torture.
I wonder, at times, whether we have reached the stage in human development where we simply don't know how to live without constant stimulation?
Have we become total dopamine addicts?
That's a somewhat scary thought, in a way.
Thanks for stopping by, and have a wonderful Friday!
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2026.05.14 23:34 PST
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