Noise

 I have an old clock that belonged to my great grandfather. I've had it repaired and it sits above this keyboard, old technology staring down at the new. The air conditioning is off and the window wide open. At four thirty on a Saturday morning in Greensboro, it is quite silent. I can hear the steady tick-tock of that clock as it marks the passing of time. I hear the night creatures with their chirping sounds and wonder what they say. The clacking of my typing breaks that silence and I hesitate, I love to hear those sounds. I wonder if that is what it was like for writers back in the old days. Did the scratching of their quills interrupt their thoughts ? I imagine that it did. Then those sounds lull me into thought and I become lost in them. The silence can be a distraction.
 Maybe though it is during those times that we refile our thoughts. I often feel like I have papers strewn all over the place, notes here and there in a jumbled mess. I believe that is the result of spending too much time on social media. There are so many topics and discussions that I get confused. It can be an emotional roller coaster if you allow that. Yesterday I took time to just sit and work on my manuscript. Technically that isn't correct as a manuscript has to be hand written and I'm typing it. I did have in mind at one time to teach myself the art of calligraphy so my writing would be both legible and beautiful. I'm thinking now I should just concentrate on legible if I wish to write that manuscript. Well, I'll just type it ! We do need to know when to reduce our expectations a bit and settle for the practical. I'm not so certain I have the patience to actually write it all out. I don't think it would add much value to the work, do you ? Maybe just the foreword should be that way. But here I go wandering off again.
 I'm wondering if society hasn't become too complex for man. What I'm thinking about is how small the world has become. We live in the information age, maybe it is too much information. Are we allowing all this information to distract us from the practical ? In the little town where I was raised back in the fifties there was much that was unknown. I can't see where it hurt a thing. We had two channels on the television and an AM radio. We listened to the national news on one and the top forty on the other. The library was there if you wished to learn a bit more about things. It took effort to learn and it took time. Now we just read all these opinions, sometimes supported by facts, sometimes not, and feel like we are educated. What was it that we were taught ? Get your own house in order before criticizing others. Confucius said :
  “To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order; we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.”
 A lot of sayings have been credited to him,  this one is genuine. I think he was onto something. The Bible also has verses about this subject. It is surprising how many of the idioms we were taught come from the Bible and ancient history. Seems like people have been saying the same thing for centuries, what man needs to learn is to listen. Maybe we just can't hear because of all the noise. Seems like the world is getting noisier all the time. Progress drowning serenity ?
 Confucius did say " first put the family in order."  A great deal of the unrest we are seeing today stems from that very problem. Just like Confucius said, we begin by putting our hearts right. A just heart is not so concerned with personal needs. A just heart has respect for everyone. Truth is, as a nation, we can't even agree to respect the same flag !