Deep Listening

I decided to sit in in the Ovalwood Café just like I do every day for lunch. At first it was hard to concentrate on all the noises around me because of all the distractions and many different noises. The loudest noise were the big group of people talking across the room. Usually I would not understand them, but once I focused, I could hear mostly of what they were saying. They were talking about their weekend how they wanted to go to the movies sometime this week. Once they left, I could focus on some of the other smaller amplitudes of sounds around me. Next to me I could hear the muffled sound of my roommate's song on her headphones. Some parts were louder than others. I could also hear a guy eat some chips from a couple yards away. The crunch seemed louder than usually, but no one seemed to notice. Every once in awhile, in the café a very loud smoothie machine would turn on for a few seconds, blocking out most of the sounds around me. The longer I sat there, the less people there were. This made it a lot easier to focus on the smaller amplitudes of sounds around me. I heard a guy taping his foot a few tables from me. I could also hear the door on the other side of the room open and close as people would walk in, something I usually do not hear. The whole duration of the sound the background of this scene is a television above me barely loud enough to hear it and light chatter of people around me. As more and more people left I could hear even smaller sounds like someone typing on their laptop and eating an apple on the other side of the room. Throughout this experience, I heard sounds I would normally never hear or pay attention to when I sit in here every day for lunch. Usually I am focused on homework, eating my lunch or watching Netflix, which mostly cancels out the rest of the sounds in the café. I believe if I would have stayed until I was the only one in the café, I would have still heard sounds from other parts of this building because there is no such thing as silence.