I lost my train of thought

The house where I grew up was in a pretty 'normal', middle class neighborhood in the Midwest. Tree lined streets, kids running around the neighborhood or riding their bikes, a pond and creek nearby where many a frog were fetched, clothes were muddied, and knees were skinned. There were also train tracks that ran along about a 1/4 of a mile away or so, not close enough to ever see the train go by from our house, but close enough to hear the horn blow (I'm tempted to say whistle, because it's a train, and it just seems fitting, but to be accurate in my description, it was definitely a horn sound) and sometimes a small rumble from the cars on the tracks when it got to the intersection of the main road outside of my neighborhood.

I remember so often visitors asking us if the sound bothered us. To which we typically and quite sincerely replied with another question, "What sound?" We'd lived in the house for 9+ years and truly didn't even hear the train anymore, we actually had to try TO hear it.

This memory came back to me the other day while I sat up late one night reading in my new place and I heard a faint, but familiar sound. The sound of a horn in the distance. A train at a crossing somewhere, not so nearby, but not too far away to hear. Much softer than the one from my childhood recollection, but resonating in almost exact resemblance otherwise. It made me wonder about how we seem to become accustomed to things, so much so that we simply no longer notice them. If everything stays the same, or repeats itself in the same manner for so long, we seem to become conditioned, without even realizing, to just not notice it anymore. Even our noses essentially 'stop smelling' the same scent after being around it for an extended amount of time.

I started to wonder if this is why we purposely choose to shake things up once in a while. Life throws us some un-expectations for sure, but how many do we bring upon ourselves? It might even be when things are running unusually well in life. Have you ever picked a fight with a boyfriend or girlfriend just for the satisfaction of seeing them react? Just for the exhilaration that might come from sending them into a state in which you don't generally see them? If things were happy and perfect all the time (as we maybe find ourselves wishing they would be), we'd likely grow entirely accustomed to the sameness of it all, wouldn't we? Seems we'd start to lose sensation and just glaze over until life became boring. Same reason we purposely choose to read specific stories, watch particular films or listen to certain music that we know will instigate feelings of sadness or melancholy, or anger and annoyance…purposely bringing about whatever the contrary mood, because you just can't keep feeling the same thing all the time without it losing its worth or worse yet, becoming virtually absent. Maybe we need to stir ourselves out of the hypnosis simply to relearn how to appreciate what we have. Just in case we've lost our train of thought or unintentionally tuned it right out of our consciousness.