# Chapter 118 “ . . . father . . . do(es) not watch anything but Fox News, with the volume turned to just above Jackhammer and just below Permanent Brain Damage.” Harms

The older I become, the less capacity I have to tolerate loud consistent noises. My focus is too important, to permit this in my life. Of course I don’t always have control over such matters, and people playing the radio or TV at brain-wrecking levels is one of those matters.

It fascinates me, that my parentals could not handle the noise of children or traffic, but the louder the TV the better. What’s up with that?? So evidently one kind of noise is acceptable, pursued even, and another kind of noise is intolerable? More than hearing is at play here.

Thankfully since mom passed away, my dad is generally too busy talking to watch much television. Of course him talking to ME when I am trying to resolve a clients problem on the other side of the world, presents ME with the same problem. It is a noisy and distracting world, and we still have the same remaining challenges to address in the world. So how do you or I get important stuff done with “the volume turned to just above Jackhammer and just below Permanent Brain Damage.”?

This is just the world we live in, and of course we are pursuing all the obvious solutions, like finding the remote, but the question remains. In my twisted dual life of living 60% of the time in Europe and 40% of the time in America with my dad, it has come down to such a dichotomy as this: in America I get the light-weight things done like email and personal visits. In Europe I get the heavy-weight things done like thinking and reading. The more focus a task requires, the more likely I am to do it in Europe.

With appropriate amounts of silence and coffee, my change-the-world quotient soars.