August 8
I live right above a bathhouse: voices of every kind — the groans of the men swinging weights, the slap of the masseur, the bellowing of the quarrellers, the splash of the divers. Yet I swear to you: the noise outside does no harm if there is calm within. Everything may roar, so long as no turmoil dwells in the breast.
Letters to Lucilius, Letter 56 (freely rendered)
Listening mode
I live right above a bathhouse: voices of every kind — the groans of the men swinging weights, the slap of the masseur, the bellowing of the quarrellers, the splash of the divers. Yet I swear to you: the noise outside does no harm if there is calm within. Everything may roar, so long as no turmoil dwells in the breast.
Sometimes a disturbing noise is also a relief. As long as someone is drilling next door, your distraction has a cause that lies outside you. You can be annoyed about it, and that annoyance is unambiguous. It has a direction.
Then the drilling stops. For a few minutes it is pleasantly quiet, and you wait for the work to get going by itself. Instead you notice that you are reading the same paragraph for the third time. Something else is occupying you, perhaps since the morning, and the noise had only given it a more convenient name.
This doesn't mean that noise is irrelevant. Some sounds really do wear you down, and it would be strange to turn that into a question of strength of character. The difficulty is rather that from the inside you can hardly tell what is bothering you from what merely comes in handy. In the moment both feel the same: like something coming from outside.
After the lunch break the drilling starts again. For a moment you are almost glad of it.
