"Everybody should have his personal sounds to listen for - sounds that will make him exhilarated and alive or quiet and calm"

Each life benefits from a private soundtrack, a set of cherished noises and melodies that tune the inner weather. Hearing is constant and porous; unlike closing eyes, we rarely shut our ears. Curating what enters them becomes a form of authorship over mood and attention. The right sounds can spark a pulse of vitality, drums that quicken footsteps, a chorus that lifts the chest, the pleasurable jolt of a kettle’s boil and a bustling street at dawn. Other sounds invite stillness: rain on a window, a cat’s purr, the gentle continuity of waves, a piano line that settles the breath. To know which is which for oneself is already a kind of wisdom.

This is a call to intentional listening rather than passive endurance. It urges building rituals: the track that signals work has begun, the birdsong playlist that softens the evening, the white noise that fences off distraction, the quiet that reminds the mind it can rest. Not all nourishment is musical; the clink of dishes, the hum of a heater, the muffled library hush can be as restorative as Beethoven. Sound anchors memory as strongly as scent. A few opening bars can return a person to a first love, a childhood kitchen, a distant summer. Choosing what to hear is choosing what to remember.

There is an ethics here too: defending one’s sonic boundaries against the blur of airports, traffic, and algorithmic feeds. Agency means switching off as much as pressing play, seeking parks and sanctuaries, embracing silence as a vivid sound. It also means respecting that others’ restorative sounds may differ wildly, shaped by culture, neurology, and history. Personal soundscapes can be shared, traded, and discovered together, but they remain intimate. To cultivate them is to carry a portable refuge and a portable spark, tools for being awake when life asks for brightness and composed when it asks for calm.