Ya Hear Me?

What do you hear right now? Is it the hum of traffic? The murmur of your computer? The chatter coming from people in the other room? The tweeting of birds?

How often do I listen? This is a question that struck me the other day. I work on a farm and a lot of that work is alone or done with loud machinery running. Therefore I like to use an MP3 (yes, those still exist) to listen to things while I work. A lot of the time it feels like I have earphones in my ears over half the day. And yes, audio books and music are important and can be entertaining (more on that a bit later), but for me they seem to take over my life. It's like reading a good book: I just can't wait to get back to it. With an audio book, all I have to do is plug in my earphones and I'm off! It doesn't matter who is around me or what I'm doing, I can listen to that audio book while blocking the rest of the world out.

Sure, it hurts relationships if I listen too much. Sure things get confused because I'm not paying attention to what people say, but at least I'll figure out what happens next!

I've come to this conclusion before. "I'm not listening to others enough! I'm not praying enough!" So out come the earphones and away goes the MP3. I've 'fasted' from my MP3 for weeks before. At first it works: I feel more observant, more worshipful, more 'happy'. Then things start to get ugly. My thoughts start taking over. That's when I turn to my MP3 just to get away from my awful thoughts. And the cycle begins again.

Is that right? Am I just using my MP3 at that point as a block to ignore dealing with evil thoughts? Maybe. But that's not the point. The point is that sometimes listening to others (or even just unplugging) can help. Sure, there's nothing inherently wrong with audio books or music. Audio books are just like books: they can build you up or burn you down. The point is not to stop listening, but to stop listening too much to the wrong things.

There, those are my thoughts. Quite a roundabout way of saying it, but I like long-cuts. Hope you understood what I was trying to say.
And a quick side-note: I got interviewed! Here's a link.