I sketched out these thoughts about six weeks ago, on a beautiful fall sunny day in New Jersey.

Surrounded by falling leaves in my Zen Grotto. Leaves peacefully falling to the ground around me. The ground was covered that day like the first snowfall we would soon have. Ankle deep in some places.

The quiet of the leaves falling through space was soon penetrated by a leaf blower in a neighboring yard. Actually, an army of leaf blowers. An ironic counterpoint to the peacefulness of the falling leaves. The suburban homeowner’s weapon of mass destruction against the falling leaves and the end of summer. Leaves which had just died after fulfilling their life’s mission of providing oxygen.

When I sit in my my grotto and journal, the exercise typically begins as a compilation of what I see around me. An approach that typically makes me be present and opens my mind. This might be the one time in a day that I stop. I look. I listen to the natural world. A world unrelated to a brick attached to my ear.

I can hear birds chirping. Watch the birds and squirrels coexist. See the leaves die their natural death.

This particular day the noise rang out and smacked me. The blasts of the leaf blower entered my consciousness as an image for the noise in my daily existence. Noise which I must continually navigate in and through. Some days worse than others. Leaf blowers appear and disappear outside of my control. Each are obstacles that I need to pierce through to see, hear, and feel what is going on. To be present. Mindful.

The distraction of the noise, of the leaf blower, is just that. Distraction. A distraction to be ignored. Allowed to wash over me and permit a focus on the here and now. The important. As opposed to the trivial.

Transcending the metaphor, the individual making the most noise is to be ignored. We need to ignore the leaf blowers in our lives. In our politics. The leaf blowers spew noise but do not affect the beauty and existence in front of us if we push them to a mere passing sound in our consciousness. Instead, focusing on the quiet beauty around us, enveloping us. The dying leaf falling to the ground. The wind lightly blowing. The distant, soft sound of the chirping cardinal

Focus on the silent. The white space between the noise. The leaf blowers will always be ready to barge in if we let them. If we let them affect us. But why?