We must not let noise overpower sound. In today's society, political arenas are taking over the splendor of our world. This story is an ode to the beauty and the humanity of culture, that is, at times, forgotten in the face of uglier things, in the face of noise.

In the early hours of the morning, I sit on the porch and read, lost and finding life in a world not my own. The din from the consistent whirring subconsciously fills my head with noise, a constant that goes largely unnoticed until I tell myself to distinguish it. But, I don't tell myself to distinguish it and my brain isn't bothered. And I continue my stroll into a universe within words on a page.

And suddenly, as if the entire world has fallen into a hush, all is absolutely, entirely, quiet. Save my breath, which I have only now become acutely aware of, I can hardly hear a sound. I feel as though my world has been muffled and my brain begins to strain itself, my ears pounding in search of some sort of sound, for the absence of the whir has suddenly sent my alternate universe into a downward spiral, as if it were missing a key ingredient in functioning as an escape. Maybe that key ingredient was the sole thing I was escaping from.

Maybe because every sound around me is made more astute, I begin to listen and truly hear. I hear familiar notes of the piano drift up to my ear, I hear the birds in the trees beyond the row of houses, I hear the hum from the cars on the road, I hear families speaking as they walk the streets, and suddenly I'm alive in my very own world, one I once thought occupied by mere noise.

There's a difference, between sound and noise. There truly is. Noise makes you want to hide away, cowering, unwilling to exist in the world that it occupies so often. Noise either makes you want to cover your ears or makes you numb to it all together. For what worth has a world with only the occupation of noise? Sound, however, oh, sound is humanity. Sound reminds us of the beauty that is creation, of the life in all of us. The birds, trees, voices, movement.

But, as quick as it came, the sound eluded me, the noise preceded. The whirring came back on as if it had realized what it had done, what it had allowed. My ears were filled, my brain, while initially startled, went soft, and I entered that old, alternate universe in which I would find my escape, trying, at the same time, to slow down the inherent process of forgetting sound.

We must remember sound. We must not grow so accustomed to noise that we begin to accept it as a part of our day to day lives. We must not grow numb to it and ignore how it is hiding the good and the beautiful and the humane things of our world. We must not allow noise to continue its whirring to the point that it forces us to cower away behind stories and alternate universes, ones without noise, in order to escape it, rather than facing it. We must not let noise overpower sound.