The other side of silence

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity. -George Eliot, Middlemarch

We do walk around not hearing things. Our brains filter even what we do perceive from our registered sensations. We sort and prioritize our senses.

If you were to walk outside right now, what would you experience? Sunlight, a breeze, maybe an autumn chill? Even the act of having expectations would change your experience. You would certainly notice anything that immediately varied from your expectations.

A minute ago I walked outside. I expected to feel a slight chill or hear a car driving by. Instantly, I was surprised by the scent of clean laundry, the smell of someone's dryer sheets wafting up from the basement. Then I heard the dryer. I perceived the smell before the sound, in fact, the smell told me to listen for that particular noise. I had a new narrative and directed my attention to look for the pieces fitting the puzzle.

I didn't hear everything, not the sound of air molecules bouncing off each other all around me. Not the worms in the ground beneath me, not the leaves on the trees quivering in the wind. As Eliot eloquently writes, we don't perceive most of the world around us. We only get a sliver of reality, and usually only the slice we've selected to narrate and experience for the moment.

A few nights ago we watched a show about research in Crete and the decline of the Minoans. They've tried to explain what happened to the Minoans for a long time, usually falling back on a narrative of war and conquest. After the devastating 2004 tsunami, someone made that connection. Once they had the idea of looking for evidence of a tsunami, they found it. The evidence had been there all along. They had been staring at it for years. But it didn't mean anything until they had a particular reason to see it.

Of course, Eliot goes much further than merely discussing the world of our senses. Her real point is the world of human feeling, understanding, and empathy. Perhaps as a matter of survival, we don't really feel for each other very much. But maybe we should try to pay a little more attention to "all ordinary human life."