TALK on the PHONE

If you’re a tree frog or an ovenbird in mating season and you happen to live in a habitat that lies within 3,500 feet of a road, bummer for you. Not only are you more likely to collide with an SUV, but you’re going to have a harder time finding a mate.

Research suggests that human-generated noises also mess with nesting behavior, predator-prey dynamics, and sleep patterns. In other words, wildlife gets stressed out by noise & so do we, it turns out - the world is getting louder. Scientists define “noise” as unwanted sound, and the level of background din from human activities has been doubling roughly every three decades, beating population growth. Road traffic has tripled & planes are even audible overhead 70 percent of the time. And while that’s obviously a nuisance for animals and visitors seeking a restorative experience, this growing anthropophony (a fancy word for the human soundscape) is also contributing to stress-related diseases and early death, especially in and around cities.

But the physical responses that helped save our asses from predators back on the veldt (and still might prove useful at a busy intersection) have obvious downsides in the middle of a telephonic conversation or while you’re trying to get some sleep. On the flip side, positive sounds like chill music, pleasing birdsong, and the voices of loved ones stimulate the brain’s emotional centers, bringing feelings of joy, calm, and well-being.

Is Your Noisy Neighborhood Slowly Killing You?

“Those noises are violating your experience. It’s half as stressful as doing the speech task. Those aren’t trivial effects.”

It all adds up to a dagger twice thrust: Not only does background noise interfere with our much-needed ability to recuperate, but in the places where we live and play, we have increasingly fewer havens from the onslaught.

Amidst those crowded streets, folks around, television sets playing idiotic soap operas & music from nowhere to a group of peeping talking loudly in thee discussion of nothing that important specially on there speakerphone having to come out on the roads to eventually talking there highest of pitches to make things audible, since they wont find network that easily available inside there four walled privacy.

With a noise here, and a noise there, when from nowhere your phone rings & you get all stressed & strangled trying to understand every bit of a conversation in between the call dropping and no network coverage to everything else that would be more audible then the actual conversation. I would end up hearing almost anything to everything but not the person who I was talking to.- in between those sudden gaps, trying to make out what was reciprocated and understand what was said - takes a while to actually make the conversation going. It was pestering & erratic to lower down all the audible musings and get hold of your muse on the phone do all the talking while you tried even harder to talk back with no avail as your voice would not get through and it's somewhere at the other end or in here that I would be blaming the whole noisy tantrums that followed specially while you had to talk over the phone.

How do I intend to understand what thy said, did the other person on the other side understood what I was saying? - for I assure you, I make it a point to switch off my fans & water coolers or music & TV sets to a pin drop silence before I would have to talk - secluding myself to a much lonely of sorts of unsorted environment that abruptly had no more noises from my end, & would often ask the other person to find solitude under complete silence - while we 'walked the talk'.

Even the telephone bill shines brighter day by day & I sit and think, what good of a discussion in a conversation it be, when there was no actual talking - for all the while in assumptions of half of it gone above head & as much hard you tried purposely of not letting its significance dither way - you end up to this death of a much joyous talk that it could probably have been (an overwhelming one - sufficing to ones core) - but all in vein ending up to this ranting nuisance. everything i hear seems to be going everywhere or somewhere, other then my ear & then it settles down in bits & pieces trying to recollect. Not everything was being heard what was being told & everything was being told, that could probably be not heard. And as soon as the conversation over the phone ended, there was this silence around & as much willing I was to call back but wouldn't dare, since I was afraid that it would be to no avail since the noisy ghosts would trouble us again and nothing would be audible at all. 

Though it was as much beautiful to say silent, & hear the world talk, and do all the talking. You could hear the whispers & over polluting noises. You would just want to shut yourself up & let the world do talking while you befriended silence in your keen endeavor to practice & preach no useless blabbering over the phone, while you could text everything & convey what you wanted to. So now, I make sure that I end up writing lengthy paragraphs of what is to be told, and in reciprocation gets equal amounts of texts in revert doing the actual talking, over these communicative measures that we often have been trying to find solace to and that just about suffices it all mostly. But then, at times you have to take a call & as much you would want to say, you were wanting to be heard.

Sometimes you go blank, really mesmerized by someones talks or texts & glad that you had this talking & at times, you say - what a pity, I would not have had taken this call at all. A time well spent over a good conversation in ones curiosity to figure out & share things becomes a concern & a part of your daily chore rituals & a simple text, if not lengthy paragraphs promise you that there was this constructive conversation that was parallel in approach & by all means you would not to have it ever ended. if only people knew the art of ways in which we could communicate, there would completely be no necessity of us being a part of this whole noisy talking experience. 

I am glad to have invented ways to talk, without even talking.

I would often request a person on the other side to come in a more peaceful environment, away from all the other noises & then talk to me. - Anonymous