Comment by Bethany:

I always long for silence and have moved out to the country to get a little more of it! There are still tractors and combines a few distant dogs barking, but I don’t mind it nearly so much as the city noises!

In contrast, we lived overseas for a few years in a country where the culture insisted that the louder the activity the more fun. So every store in the mall was trying to blast the others out of the water. And when your neighbors had a party, it had to be cranked. Frequently, we would go out to dinner and not be able to hear the conversation at our own table because the music was too loud to even hear yourself think. It was not my definition of fun! Talk about culture shock! It is so good to be home. It is still noisy, but nothing in comparison.

Comment by J.D:

I always pray for silence and my surroundings. Gosh much needed peace and quiet. Conversations and people yelling, loud tv’s to the maximum. People turning it up louder and louder. Hopefully in another century we can also not have worry about headphones and just listen to ourselves through silence. Hope it is soon!

Comment by Jan Tetrault:

The greatest thing about a power outage is the quiet.

Comment by Shoshana:

Something I have always found interesting about the 18th Century… I live near Niagara Falls. In the 18th century, you could hear the falls from Fort Niagara which is about 20 miles from the fort. The earth was that quiet then. I have been to the fort many times and I can almost feel the falls, I wish I could hear them.

Comment by Nick:

This is one of my biggest pet peeves. The absolute cacophony of sound that surrounds us everywhere we go.

Our fridge and freezer stay in a room away from the rest of the house, I can’t stand to listen to them. We don’t own a TV, my wife listens to the radio occasionally but usually the only time we have anything “playing” it is a preaching tape in our little tape player.

I can’t hardly stand to go to most stores anymore. Which makes the fact that I currently work at a national chain retail drugstore very difficult.

The manager at the store I work at plays the music so loud that I literally often cannot understand what the customers right in front of me are saying!

I asked him one day if we could turn the music down. His answer was, “When the volume is a little too loud, people buy more cards.” All I could do was stand there open-mouthed.

Comment by Caroline:

I have noticed in my own home that when we turn off the tv, radio and other distraction everyone seems to mellow out.

Comment by Rose:

This really hit home for me. I absolutely crave peace and quiet. I worked for 9 years at a nuke plant. everything beep, buzzed, honked or made some other awful noise. I wore earplugs most of the time, but I really think the noise did something to my nervous system. I even have a hard time listening to music, which I have always loved, for very long at a time now. When the heat or air come on in the house it bothers me. When I am outside in my yard far away from artificial sound I am content. Otherwise I feel bothered and irritated in a way I cannot explain.

Comment by Wendy (The Local Cook):

sometimes I get to see a similar effect when nationals from developing countries come to visit our offices in the U.S. They don’t comment on the noise so much as the fact that there are so many choices of things to buy, eat (although it makes them sick), and how everyone takes cars even very short distances.

Comment by Dave B:

I had a profound experience in Canyonlands National Park. I was camping and the silence was so perfect and absolute, that I still remember that, more so, than the beautiful vistas.

Comment by goldfish:

I find people talking into their cell phones everywhere I go disconcerting. I don’t know why this bothers me so much.

Comment by finallygettingtoeven.com:

Noise did not used to bother me in my younger years, in fact i would search it out, radio on way too loud, Tv blaring in the background. Now i prefer peace & quiet, so much so that some mornings i want to yell out to the birds chirping happily, “Hey! quiet down out there for awhile” of course, they would never listen…

Comment by Anne B:

People who come inside our house usually comment on how quiet it is, probably because we don’t leave the TV or radio on for “background noise.” The lady who feeds our cats when we’re away always leaves our kitchen radio on during the day so the cats will hear the voices and be less lonely; little does she know how little noise they hear when we’re home! I’m sure she’d turn on the TV for them if we had one.