Wise Women of Age : Living in a World of Sensory Overload

Almost 20 years ago, my husband and I lived in an urban community. We had a beautiful, old home that had once been the manse for the local Presbyterian Church. The house had all that great woodwork that many people envy, and plenty of stained glass windows. However, behind our home was a four-lane highway, immediately next to that was an active railroad track. The front of our house faced the beautiful Beaver River at the confluence of the Ohio River. Just on the far side of the river was another set of active railroad tracks. The sound of the trains coming across the river was most certainly noticeable. Oh, yes…and we lived about 20 miles from the Pittsburgh International Airport, so we had “flight paths” overhead. You know that old saying, “location, location, location.” We had a beautiful home in a not-so-great location.

I’m usually an easygoing person. Short of social injustice, I don’t get easily riled up. However, one particular day I had an experience that was the straw that broke this camel’s back. I was solitarily working in my garden. Trains were running on both sides of the house, a plane was going overhead, a neighbor was cutting grass with a power mower, and to top it off, another neighbor was burning papers in a barrel and sparks from her fire were falling on me.

I realized I was the victim of “sensory overload.” What is sensory overload? According to the Psychology Dictionary, it’s a state where our senses are overwhelmed by stimuli, where a person is unable to process and respond to all of them.

Indeed, I was overwhelmed. Like the character from the 1976 movie, Network, (once critiqued as the “angriest movie ever”), I became “mad as hell, and wasn’t going to take it anymore.” So began our quest for a quieter place to live.

Turn the page, and we are moving into an Amish farmhouse, deep in a valley in the heart of an Amish community. We moved there in a snowstorm, with no comfort mechanicals installed in the house. The first night we moved in, I took our dogs out about ten o’clock at night. The silence was startling. To be honest, the quietude sort of creeped me out. I don’t believe I had ever been in such a quiet place before. Ever. I could actually hear my dogs peeing. As I waited for them to finish their outdoor toileting, I detected a sound from far away. Listening intently, I realized it was the sound of horses’ hooves clippity-clopping on the main highway almost a mile away, pulling a buggy, transporting one of our Amish neighbors from Point A to Point B.

Whew! Could it be that we moved from sensory overload to almost a state of sensory deprivation? Not only that, the sky was blacker than I have ever known. The stars were twinkling more brilliantly too. Without the ambient lighting glowing from a town or city in the night sky, it was luxuriant and sensually dark.

My time at the farm is rich with memories of quietly gardening on a Sunday morning and hearing the Amish men’s hymns floating up the valley from their in-home church services. The porch swing creaking, our free-range chickens clucking softly around the yard, the hummingbirds buzzing and dive-bombing around the feeder on our front porch, the comforting snap and pop of a wood fire in the kitchen wash stove. All were sounds of the gentleness of sensory comfort. A slower, mellower lifestyle.

We moved again with little regret. Just another turn of the page in our life. We lived on that farm for about ten years before returning to our small hometown, downsizing into a little retirement home on a busy and bustling street. New windows help keep the traffic and outside noises out.

Once again after working in my garden recently, I plopped into the hammock to rest and perhaps doze off. My neighbor with his outdoor surround-sound stereo speakers could have cared less. I like Led Zeppelin, but there’s a time and place for it. Another neighbor started mowing his grass. Couldn’t they see I was trying to nap?