The World Is a Bit Too Noisy

While trying to think through a thought, my phone screen lit up. Then it went dark. Then another notification arrived. Then a message. Then a trivial reminder from an app I had ignored. The thought, meanwhile, was left half-formed. It took flight like a bird whose destination was unclear and vanished from sight. A few seconds later, I tried to recall what I had been thinking, but I could not. Of course, the rest of the day continued. Buses passed, people spoke, evening fell. But that lost thought never returned. Perhaps one of the most invisible losses of modern life is the quiet disappearance of thoughts on the verge of fully forming.

The world has been talking for a long time. Perhaps it always has, but now it has become a state of never-ending speech. As you walk the streets, billboards speak, screens speak, news speaks, comments speak. Before one topic is fully finished, another begins. Before one image fades, another appears. The lights of cities no longer turn off late into the night; screens glow behind windows, open tabs multiply, an invisible current drags people from one place to another. What we call noise sometimes is not a sound but a constant presence. Perhaps you do not hear it, but you carry it within you.

The strange thing is that even when people say they long for silence, they still shy away from it. Think of the slight unease you feel on a long journey when your phone’s battery dies. Unexpected silence descends. No one wants anything from you. No news arrives. No screen lights up. And in that very moment, you realize how long it has been since you were truly alone. Being alone is different. Silence is something else. You can sometimes be by yourself yet still carry within you a world that never stops talking. The real challenge is confronting the emptiness left when all those sounds are finally withdrawn.

Perhaps this is why attention, what we call attention, is growing increasingly fragile. Things that once could be contemplated at length now strike the mind in fragments. Midway through a book, another thought intrudes. During a conversation, eyes drift to another screen. Just as a thought is about to deepen, another image appears. The human mind is beginning to resemble a room with dozens of open windows. The air entering is abundant, but it is unclear which window it comes from. Thoughts wander but never settle. Sentences are begun but never completed.

I sometimes feel this more clearly in cities. On a crowded public transport vehicle, everyone looks somewhere else. Hundreds of people share the same carriage but not the same silence. Each carries different sounds, different images, different stories. Even when you look at their faces, it is hard to tell where their attention truly lies. It is as if their bodies are here, but their minds are constantly summoned elsewhere. A notification away. A news update away. The next image away.

Perhaps the world’s noise begins precisely here—not in what we hear, but in our constantly shifting attention. Because to truly sense something, a person needs a moment to linger. To truly look at a tree. To feel the weight of a sentence. To understand what a feeling is. But as the rhythm of life accelerates, some things pass unnoticed. People may see more now, but they see everything for shorter durations. They may hear more, but they listen to less.

I remember once, walking down a busy street at dusk, looking up at the sky. The air was slowly darkening. A thin sliver of blue appeared between the buildings. At that moment, I realized hundreds of people were passing along the same street, yet very few raised their heads. Perhaps they were in a hurry. Perhaps lost in thought. Or perhaps they had simply become accustomed. People stop seeing things once they grow used to them. They grow used to noise. To the endless flow of images. To the screens that never close. And perhaps most of all, they grow used to the fragmentation of their own attention.

Yet silence is not merely the absence of sound. It is a space—a gap where thought can settle. A distance where feeling can emerge without haste. Perhaps this is why certain moments remain unforgettable. A few minutes spent before a window after everyone has gone to sleep. The faint hum of the city as it slows. That strange state during a long walk when you stop thinking about anything at all. In those moments, you are not stepping outside the world. Perhaps for the first time, you truly turn inward.

How much of what we are constantly exposed to do we actually choose? Of all the images, sounds, and information that pass through our minds during the day, how much truly belongs to us? Where has the space needed for thinking gone? When was the last time a person truly heard their own voice? Perhaps there is no answer to these questions. Or if there is, it is not easy to find. Because noise does not always silence questions—it leaves them unfinished.

As night deepens, the windows of cities turn off one by one. But some remain lit. Some screens still glow. Some sounds continue. The world does not seem to sleep. It constantly tells, calls, shows. And sometimes, in the midst of all this flow, a person pauses and realizes that what they long for may not be complete silence after all. Perhaps what they long for is simply not to lose that faint sound still audible amid all the noise. For the most fragile thing of all, even more fragile than the quietest places in the world, is the quiet voice within a person. And perhaps the true fear is one day no longer being able to choose it.