Periods of Incomprehension

Excerpt from "How Learning a Foreign Language Reignited My Imagination," by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic Monthly, May 22, 2013:

"I started studying French in the summer of 2011, in the throes of a mid-30s crisis. I wanted to be young again. Once, imagination was crucial to me. The books filled with trains, the toy tracks and trestles—they were among my few escapes from a world bounded by my parents’ will. In those days, I could look at a map of some foreign place and tell you a story about how the people there looked, how they lived, what they ate for dinner, and the exotic beauty of the neighborhood girls.

When you have your own money, your own wheels, and the full ownership of your legs, your need for such imagination, or maybe your opportunity to exercise it, is reduced.

And then I came to a foreign language, where so much can’t be immediately known, and to a small town where English feels like the fourth language.

The signs were a mystery to me. The words I overheard were only the music of the human voice. A kind of silence came over me.

...There is a symmetry in language ads that promise fluency in three weeks and weight-loss ads that promise a new body in roughly the same mere days. But the older I get, the more I treasure the sprawling periods of incomprehension, the not knowing, the lands beyond Google, the places in which you must be immersed to comprehend."

The Problem is the Resistance

Excerpt from "Finding Peace During Noisy Trips," by Stephanie Rosenbloom, The New York Times, Feb. 20, 2013: 

"Denial of what’s going on just doesn’t work,” said Andy Puddicombe, who discusses the benefits of meditation in his book Get Some Headspace and on his Web site, Headspace.com. Attempting to ignore the loudmouth next to you by breathing deeply is what Mr. Puddicombe calls a classic meditation-related mistake — and one that’s likely to frustrate you even more as you struggle to focus on your breath instead of the noise. Besides, there’s not much you can do about a plane or train buzzing with sounds. What you can change, of course, is how you respond.

“The sound — that in itself isn’t the problem,” Mr. Puddicombe said. “The problem is the resistance in our mind.” In other words, don’t sit there fuming about the shouting child and his ineffectual parents. Mr. Puddicombe said your discomfort is not the shouting, it’s the gap between reality (the noisy child) and what you want the situation to be (quiet). What Mr. Puddicombe calls “mindfulness meditation” (essentially being in the present moment) can help bridge the space between reality and desire. “It’s letting go of what we want it to be,” he said, “and moving closer to acceptance of what is happening right now.” (Hint: this can also be applied to matters of work, health, love.)

How wonderfully sane. But how to do it?

First, simply acknowledge that you’re frustrated (in your head, not by lobbing a shoe). “When you look at resistance it starts to lose its intensity,” Mr. Puddicombe said. Then, listen to the sound. Don’t blame the noisemakers. Just listen to the sound.

“If you give that your full attention,” Mr. Puddicombe said, “eventually the mind will get bored of it.” He gave as an example being on an hourlong train ride next to someone with iPod music loud enough for you to hear. Your mind simply won’t stay focused on the music for an hour, Mr. Puddicombe said.

When listening to a noise, aim for “gentle acceptance.” Don’t worry about deep breathing. “Let go of the breath,” Mr. Puddicombe said. “We’re not talking about some sort of escapist trick of the mind.”

Beginners and skeptics may want to try his free daily meditation app, Headspace (on-the-go). It’s brief and includes instruction so you’re not alone with your subconscious and a didgeridoo. His simple mindfulness tips are seen by scores of passengers on Virgin Atlantic, which has a Headspace channel with videos about falling sleep, even meditation for kids.

More...

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See also:

• Traveling Light
• The Only Way to Save His Sanity

Quiet Enough for Long Periods of Time

"Sounds from The Great Animal OrchestraWhen you listen to any soundscape, a natural soundscape, you are listening to information that tells you about biology, about resource management , medicine, religion, natural history, architecture, literature, physics, and many, many others.

For instance, people have asked me why you do this. Well, partly because I suffer from a terrible case of ADHD. I've always had this as a kid. And I had it as an adult, and I'm not much into medication. So the only thing that calms me down is going out into the natural world and listening to these creatures.

And being quiet enough for long periods of time and just shutting up and listening to things. I can't rustle my clothes, I can't move around and shuffle my feet around. I've got to sit very quietly for long periods of time, and that's what this has taught me to do. So in terms of healing and a certain kind if medicine, that's one thing the soundscape does.

It also speaks to us about religion. For instance, it's the natural soundscape from which we acquire spirituality. That was the voice of the divine for us for so many years, while we lived closely connected to the natural world."

~ Dr. Bernie Krause, from "The Great Animal Orchestra," To the Best of Our Knowledge, Nov. 11, 2012

Dr. Bernie Krause: The Great Animal Orchestra from California Academy of Sciences on FORA.tv

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See also:

• Krause, B. L. (2012). The great animal orchestra. London: Profile.
• "The Science and Art of Listening," by Seth S. Horowitz, The New York Times, Nov. 9, 2012
• Strategies for listening to sounds

To Become a Better Listener

May 7, 2012

Excerpt from "The Last Quiet Places," an On Being conversation with Gordon Hempton, May 10, 2012: 

I grew up thinking that I was a listener except on my way to graduate school one time, I simply pulled over making the long drive from Seattle, Washington, to Madison, Wisconsin, pulled over in a field to get some rest and a thunderstorm rolled over me. While I lay there and the thunder echoed through the valley and I could hear the crickets, I just simply took it all in. And it's then I realized that I had a whole wrong impression of what it meant to actually listen. I thought that listening meant focusing my attention on what was important even before I had heard it and screening out everything that was unimportant even before I had heard it.

In other words, I had been paying a lot of attention to people, but I really hadn't been paying a lot of attention to what is all around me. It was on that day that I really discovered what it means to be alive as another animal in a natural place. That changed my life. I had one question and that was how could I be 27 years old and have never truly listened before? I knew, for me, I was living life incredibly wrong, so I abandoned all my plans, I dropped out of graduate school, I moved to Seattle, took my day job as a bike messenger and only had one goal, and that was to become a better listener.

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Sounds of Silence

Through the sounds of the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic National Park, acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton guides us to One Square Inch of Silence — with the chirping twitter of the Western wren and the haunting call of the Roosevelt elk. Take this aural hike [download] and be sure to listen with a pair of headphones or earbuds. You’ll discover quieting sounds you might miss without them. 

The Only Way to Save His Sanity

Another Earth