Voices In Their Heads...

"I want everyone to freeze. Don't move. Keep your hands exactly where they are. Now look around the room."

The laughter started right away. Most of the class had their hands up touching their mutes.

"It's a normal reaction and one I'd guess a lot of you didn't even realize you were doing. Right about now you are grateful for something you normally don't think a lot about. Imagine the whole world thinking you were crazy for hearing voices. A lot of time and money was spent to fix these people."

"Is it true that they would cut up people's brains?"

"Lobotomy. Yes. They would selectively slice out portions of the brain to try to cure them."

"But there was nothing wrong with them."

"There wasn't. But they didn't know that at the time. All they knew was that the majority of people did not hear voices other than their own, and this small handful of people would swear that they did. So obviously the small group was sick. Their brains were malfunctioning.

They were the leading edge of an advancement in the human condition. Evolutionary head start. It should have proceeded more rapidly after the first few people, but the challenge was that for an evolutionary advantage to take hold you need to pass along those advantages to the next generation. Another component in treating these people was in preventing them from reproducing. Forced sterilization was common at the time. Either through surgery or through chemicals."

"That's illegal."

"It is now. It actually was supposed to be then as well, but... Now I want you all to understand, your ancestors weren't barbarians. They just didn't know any better. And the ones that were like us didn't have a way to quiet the voices. Have any of you ever had your mute fail?"

A few hands went up.

"And what was that like for you?"

Those that had raised their hands made faces. 

"When I was around your age and studying this portion of history for the first time I wanted to try an experiment in living without my mute on. I thought I'd go a week without it and see what it was like. I made it for 6 hours. The constant barrage of noise and chatter and intrusive ideas was overwhelming. I couldn't make them all take turns and not talk over each other. I had to turn back on the mute. Imagine not knowing what those voices were. Imagine everyone around you not hearing them. Imagine a time that you thought you were alone in the universe. And then imagine hearing the multiverse in your head. It's no wonder they thought they were crazy.

Now of course, we have mutes and tuners. We can isolate one voice and listen to them, we can surf the white noise of every voice at one time, we can quiet them all and just live with our own thoughts. We get to choose when we hear the rest of the multitude. And even when we quiet all of the other voices, we know we are never really alone."

This was his favorite part of teaching this unit. When they realized what not hearing the voices had really meant. He watched as realization moved from face to face. Their ancestors thought they were alone. 

"They never knew that every space they stood in, someone else stood there as well. Multitudes stood there with them. Just at a slightly different wavelength. Just at a slightly different pitch. But still there. With them. All of them together moving through their own worlds at the same time. Living the same life, but not the same way. Never alone. Always together. They thought it was just them. Singular. Not realizing that they were multitudes. Can you imagine the loneliness they felt?"

The room was quiet then. 

A few hands slowly reaching up to their mutes to tune into another frequency, just for a moment. Just to feel connected to all that they were. 

Grateful for the voices in their heads.