Have you ever simply sat and observed a public place?
Listen. Simple noises – mere sound waves and vibrations – creating and maintaining the order of everything around me. Voices speaking a language I can’t comprehend. I don’t recognize a single word that reaches my ears, yet everyone here in this square behaves accordingly and knows exactly how to react when someone speaks to them.
The easy flow of vocal vibration is soothing – I hear the beginning and ending of words, then sentences. I can get clues from volume and speed, hand gestures and facial expressions. But I sit here with my nose in a book hoping no one approaches me so that I won’t be revealed as an imposter, as someone who is only pretending to know what’s going on. I wouldn’t even know how to communicate my confusion if interrupted from my hiding.
There is a mother with two young sons across the square from me. The younger of the two is half a step behind his mother, eyes glossy and cheeks pink from crying, while his mother towers over his older brother. Her voice is raised and harsh, unwavering in her tone. He stands there avoiding eye contact, unable to defend himself. I'm too intrigued to give them the privacy of looking away (as everyone seems to have done) but it doesn’t matter anyway; I will never know the whole story – I can’t understand why he is being scolded, or if he is truly being scolded for that matter.
The boys know precisely the magnitude of what she is saying, but I cannot recognize a single sound passing over her lips. I believe I know what she means, but I cannot understand her words.
I’m almost certain I’ve been in the positions of both brothers with my own siblings as a kid. Listening to my own mom stick up for me after being pushed to tears by my older brother, or, scolding me for pushing my little sister to the point of tears. The visual seems almost identical, and I suppose that’s how the world works. Verbal language contributes such a small percentage of what we are able to comprehend. Language is just noise passing by vibration through the spaces between us.
Our eyes and ears see and hear so much more than we are capable of processing. Our minds unconsciously pick and choose the details that matter – the details worth seeing and hearing. Imagine listening to every bird’s chirp, every footstep, every car horn, every conversation; imagine taking in every color of every shirt, every display of every store-front, every person’s facial structure – we’d have no brain power left to examine and analyze any detail. We’d be an accumulation of observations without any stories to tell.
That’s why experiencing new places is so exhausting. You’re constantly trying to keep up with every detail each of your senses is relaying…it’s sunny, there’s a breeze; it smells like dog feces at this corner, but like fresh bread at the next; that building is beautifully preserved, but this one might as well be torn down. New places heighten our awareness to things that become the mundane routine at home.
Listen. Simple noises – mere sound waves and vibrations – creating and maintaining the order of everything around me. Voices speaking a language I can’t comprehend. I don’t recognize a single word that reaches my ears, yet everyone here in this square behaves accordingly and knows exactly how to react when someone speaks to them.
The easy flow of vocal vibration is soothing – I hear the beginning and ending of words, then sentences. I can get clues from volume and speed, hand gestures and facial expressions. But I sit here with my nose in a book hoping no one approaches me so that I won’t be revealed as an imposter, as someone who is only pretending to know what’s going on. I wouldn’t even know how to communicate my confusion if interrupted from my hiding.
There is a mother with two young sons across the square from me. The younger of the two is half a step behind his mother, eyes glossy and cheeks pink from crying, while his mother towers over his older brother. Her voice is raised and harsh, unwavering in her tone. He stands there avoiding eye contact, unable to defend himself. I'm too intrigued to give them the privacy of looking away (as everyone seems to have done) but it doesn’t matter anyway; I will never know the whole story – I can’t understand why he is being scolded, or if he is truly being scolded for that matter.
The boys know precisely the magnitude of what she is saying, but I cannot recognize a single sound passing over her lips. I believe I know what she means, but I cannot understand her words.
I’m almost certain I’ve been in the positions of both brothers with my own siblings as a kid. Listening to my own mom stick up for me after being pushed to tears by my older brother, or, scolding me for pushing my little sister to the point of tears. The visual seems almost identical, and I suppose that’s how the world works. Verbal language contributes such a small percentage of what we are able to comprehend. Language is just noise passing by vibration through the spaces between us.
Our eyes and ears see and hear so much more than we are capable of processing. Our minds unconsciously pick and choose the details that matter – the details worth seeing and hearing. Imagine listening to every bird’s chirp, every footstep, every car horn, every conversation; imagine taking in every color of every shirt, every display of every store-front, every person’s facial structure – we’d have no brain power left to examine and analyze any detail. We’d be an accumulation of observations without any stories to tell.
That’s why experiencing new places is so exhausting. You’re constantly trying to keep up with every detail each of your senses is relaying…it’s sunny, there’s a breeze; it smells like dog feces at this corner, but like fresh bread at the next; that building is beautifully preserved, but this one might as well be torn down. New places heighten our awareness to things that become the mundane routine at home.