Too Much Noise: Are We Losing Our Sense of Wonder?

“The longer I live, the better I understand Jimmy Vickers living under a bridge.” — Wrestling with Wisdom at the Crossroads, 15:19

That line from Wrestling with Wisdom at the Crossroads starts Chilly Billy down a familiar rabbit hole.

Jimmy Vickers was a brilliant and unconventional friend who chose to live simply, living beneath bridges and traveling by kayak. The older Billy gets, the more he understands the impulse: Stop the world, I want to get off.

There is just so much noise.

Televisions blaring in waiting rooms. Cell phones. Social media. People talking over one another. The constant demand for our attention. Billy readily admits that noise affects him more than it may affect some people. But that leads us to a larger question:

Is all the noise of the world keeping us from hearing the voice of God?

Our conversation eventually wandered into Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer and his idea of “everydayness”—the possibility that we can become so accustomed to ordinary life that we are almost anesthetized to its wonder.

And perhaps that is the greater danger. We can become so distracted by what annoys us, what isn’t going our way, and what we wish were different that we fail to recognize the blessings sitting right in front of us.

As Madge says during the conversation, sometimes the little things that aren’t exactly the way we want them to be end up stealing our joy.

This is another installment of How Should We Then Live?, our ongoing conversations about faith, wisdom, human nature, and what it means to live out what we believe.

Watch our conversation below.

We don’t claim to have all the answers. We’re still wrestling with the questions.

Grace and Peace,
Chilly Billy and Madge