Have you ever heard of the eye of a storm, the calm in the chaos? Scientifically, yes. However; in my daily life the search for calm often ends without result. Life is a hurricane of conscious mental reactions, and sometimes our feelings are a blend of waves and winds, strong and weak, rotating in a never ending vortex that could swallow us whole. Not to make it all sound so scary, there are moments when the crashing of the waves is a good thing, an exciting one, that leaves me with an instant of bliss.
Although that feeling is nowhere to be seen as I enter the most chaotic fraction of my academic day. The noise carries before I’ve even entered the bright room, voices of all different octaves that build upon one another, creating a constant hum of energy that suffocates the room. Spilling from the booths and tables, walking, some fast, others like they have no place to be, people crowd the room, too many people.
The southwest corner provides an exit. Unlike the one I entered through, this exit is blocked by a line. A trail of hungry adolescents which had been growing steadily since the end of the last hour, has now crept down the west wall. A trio of girls attempts to part the sea, and after making several passes of tapping on shoulders and squeezing through groups of individuals, who are doing their best impression of a penguin huddle, finally successfully reaching the clearing on the opposite side.
Besides the noise, the chaos of hundreds of high school students with nothing to do but stand in line and wait for their lunch tray, is anything but peaceful. Although I suppose it could be worse, eating in a silent lunch room would definitely be worse. To this unconcerning problem, there has yet to be a solution, and perhaps there never will. After I walked around the tables and sat down in my designated lunch spot, I successfully avoided the ketchup on the floor, courtesy of the lunch before, and, for a moment, breathed. I zone out of the world around me, picking a rather uninteresting place on the beige block wall and think of absolutely nothing and absolutely everything. I can only hear bits and pieces of the conversation happening across the table, nor can I hear the roar of voices that have fallen in the background.
The microwave beeps to my left, signaling that Baylee´s lunch is ready, and that’s all it takes to snap me out of my haze and now my breathing is even, almost calm.
̈Baylee, your lunch is ready,̈ I inform her, then she stands and collects her food, and the conversation turns to the homework we have in other classes and the upcoming biopsychology field trip to the zoo. Although I still have to strain my ears to hear the conversation over the noise, I’m more attuned and focused than I was before.
Some call it disrespectful and get upset because it defeats the purpose of class, but perhaps zoning out is rather a reset, a much needed break, that our brains have built in to allow us a moment to find some calm in a world that is charged with constant anxiety and chaos. Zoning out is our escape from the winds and waves and by zoning out of the chaos we snap into still peaceful water, which allows our minds a moment to relax and comprehend.