In December of 2022, I began working as an overnight baker. Everything about the job seemed like a perfect fit: I’ve struggled to sleep at night for the past decade, and thought I might as well work at a time when my brain was actually awake—and I wouldn’t have to deal with customers, or coworkers for the most part.

The thing about working this kind of position, however, is that you spend 10+ hours through the night, completely alone. The inconsistent whir of machinery, the creaks and thumps which are often tuned out by the overlap of human presence, become amplified so as to fill the vacancy in any way it can.

I was warned of this when I was offered the job, and brushed it off—I was far too delighted by the notion of being alone.

It was during these months when I began to better understand how the human brain processes sound. Like our eyes, our ears are imperfect. We take in outside stimuli, which is often fragmented, and our brains work to make sense of it. We look for context, which is dependent upon perception, and use it as a paste to glue information together. Our brains fill in the gaps.

This is a framework upon which we decide what we think is reality.

In conversation, we listen for tone to understand even plain words as they are spoken to us. Tone can be the difference between playful teasing and a threat. Perception can be the difference between assertion and disrespect. Bias alters perception, and neglects intent.

Take a walk through your neighborhood, and ask yourself why you feel no concern when you hear children screaming in the distance. How can you be sure that what you are hearing are screams of joy, and not fear? If you hear laughter, can you be certain that it isn’t maniacal?

What is the difference between thrill and danger? What is the difference between excitement and fear?

Most of us who share the same experience will have learned that it is much more likely that screaming children in a familiar neighborhood are at play, and not in danger. We know because we were once children at play. We know because we have not lived in isolation from our own culture.

If culture is the lens through which we see our world, then it is a variable in context through which we perceive information. It is a familiarity, and a comfort. It is our perceived understanding of what is right and what is wrong, what is common and what is anomalous.

When we are alone, this context changes. Unfamiliarity causes our understanding to waver—we begin to hear sounds of which we previously were not aware. We compare what we know with what we do not, and epinephrine levels rise as our brains try to make sense of a world which we once thought we knew.

When faced with the unfamiliar, we realize that we cannot rely on our own senses; that perception is not the same as our reality:

This is the horror of being.