Sounds of Living

Now Playing : "In The Sun" - Michael Stipe ft. Chris Martin

I remember when I was a child, I believed that on the day of each new birthday I was gifted with I would be miraculously and instantly updated with more knowledge and more sense of maturity. 

I was a computer wanting instant updates at a turn of a calendar page. 

Naturally, I soon wised up to the fact that having more birthdays didn't guarantee a better brain, just an older one. The only way I was going to find out if I truly have grown up is to look back on the change I have acquired while riding each year in and out.

It isn't yet October, but let me just remind you all gift-giving folks out there that yours truly will be celebrating sweet 23 in eleven hundred fifty-two hours from now. The number 23 is a special and significant one in my household. Some of you may know why, some don't...but that's okay. Sigh, I digress.

I feel that in many ways I have a thousand footsteps to go in becoming a truly mature adult. What does it mean to be a truly mature adult anyway? To give up cartoons? To hold more responsibilities? To travel alone? Stop listening to mommy?

Yes, no, yes, no, no, yes. 

It's taken me awhile to notice, but I have given up listening to my iPods 24/7. In fact, consider it lucky if you find earplugs in my ears for more than an hour a week. No Music, No Life. That was my motto--and so is Tower Records' but who says only they can live by it? :P I think like every young person, the temptation to have music blaring in your ears all the time is bliss offered by the gods of technology. 

But no more for me. 

Now I want to be able to hear. I want to listen. I want to be aware instead of being in a bubble, no matter how enjoyable. I want to feel like I am part of the environment I am standing, sitting, lying, swimming in. I want to hear the three women on the subway talk about their friends at a party, the captain announcing our landing in a foreign country, the sound of a car honk, the lady on the shopping mall intercom paging the woman who lost her purse, the magical self-moving furry worm toy salesman making his pitch, the shuffling of papers being read. The symphony of all available sounds wherever I am.

This, to me, is one of the ways I've changed this year. I no longer subject myself to isolation from the world through a pair of earbuds. I view it as just another way for me to "grow up", and I am pretty sure many a soul out there can argue in so many aspects that it has absolutely nothing to do with growing up. You won't be wrong. But I am not either.

I welcome me back to the world. Head on, full on, with my senses ready to absorb.