Everyone Crying Isn’t Crying Out Loud

Trying to find my way around the buttons on the steering wheel of a new car, I announced to my wife, “I didn’t even know I had a mute button.”

And she replied, “We all have a mute button.” And she was right.

We all have a mute button we’re born with that allows us to tune out and shut out what we don’t want to hear.

We all decide the lies we want to believe, and the truth we will not hear.

Too often we comfortably tune out the complaints of others. Even as too many of those complaints are from folks living well below the darkest side of uncomfortable. And, sadly, everyone crying isn’t crying out loud.

None of us seem to have trouble locating our mute button. Our fears, our anxieties, our pride are their own GPS system. We all know exactly how and when to mute our senses. Even, if our supposed self-interest is in the interest of our lesser self.

Of course others also do this to us, but when we find ourselves muted, our ego suddenly takes umbrage. Why? Well, because, when others shut us out what we hear is: “Shut up!” And it is never a small matter to think you don’t matter.

Anthropologists tell us human bio-receptors have been a long time in the making. And our mute buttons do serve us from going into information overload. But to hear the truth we only have to go in search of our purposeful deafness.

Deaf and dumb used to be the harsh description of a malady. And the term is best put to rest. However it is more than politically correct to think about when and how our mute button gets pushed and whether that serves us.

So listen up! Often what begins as serving us later enslaves us. What we don’t know or don’t want to know may on occasion serve us but ignorance can also be an addiction.

If you doubt this for a moment think about the ease with which the drink that relaxes the innocent can become the drink needed to begin the day, or how the housewife’s blessed pain-killing opiate becomes the person killing addiction.

Find out where the mute button is on your steering wheel. And you may discover who in you is steering you. If you don’t want to hear this, my point is made.

*Photo credit: Michael S. Piraino