I originally wanted to expand on yesterday’s post, but I think I’ll leave it as it is. I was in a mildly anxious mood, and needed to get that out of my system more than I needed to make a cogent point.

The problem with the noise analogy comes from the existence of the Hedonic Treadmill. The pressures we all face in life can be compared to a thorn in one’s eye, or a nail in one’s head, but the truth is that the marvellous human mind isn’t rigid in this fashion.

Indeed, someone exposed to background noise like a pilot will have their subconscious gnawing at the annoyance for the first few hours, probably days, but if the level is constant, the disturbance will fade. After a while, the only noticeable feature will be a slight reduction in hearing capacity, but not to the point where it inhibits capacity to any meaningful degree.

At this point, when this adaptation has occurred, what reducing the noise will cause will not be a state of relief, perhaps one of confusion at most. The individual will recognise both the noisy and the noiseless world as equivalent, but the noiseless one as marginally superior, due to the aforementioned slight inhibition of hearing capacity — though at the cost of switching back causing this subconscious annoyance again.

I have a friend who has a window open to the east, no blackout curtains — he just sleeps through the sunrise. As a consequence, he sleeps through his alarms as well. Humans are flexible.

The issue is one of mindset. We all face a fixed, invariant pressure in all of our lives: Namely that of our feet against the ground due to gravity. We only notice it when lifting heavy weights, or feeling joint pain, but it’s always there. In fact, to someone born in outer space, perhaps this pressure would be a great source of discomfort! But we don’t notice it, every day we fully accept that this is a necessity for life as we know it, and there is no discomfort from that source.

The only exception to this flexibility principle is psychological trauma, that ringing tinnitus that comes from one’s formerly-overwhelmed brain forcing one to relive the past; or, even worse, an active overwhelming situation. But even this can, through targeted action and thorough counselling, be broken down into pieces that are manageable, that do become like gravity in one’s day-to-day life.

And is someone’s life less valuable because of a recurring tinnitus? Of course not. What truly matters is never giving up, especially not on oneself. As long as you have a pulse, you’re winning.