The year is 2001, and I'm walking to school with a Walkman and headphones on. I remember this vividly because it was the first time that I heard Coldplay's Yellow on DC101 in the morning, on an overcast sky, making my way with the other kids to school.

But this day was different. This was the first time I had ever had music to accompany me on my walk to school. Usually, it was just the passing of cars and the distant yells from other kids out to their friends, meeting up as we got closer and closer to the school.

This was my first Walkman. I didn't have any cassettes, but it had an AM/FM function so I could listen to music on the way to school. That was game-changing. Now I had a soundtrack to accompany me on my journey, and it felt highlighted.

As the song was playing, I had a crush on someone at school. Crushes—simple—but they gave me butterflies in my stomach. I looked forward to going to school because it meant that I could see them. And in this moment, with this song playing and the thought of seeing them, I felt right. Everything felt right. It was like I was in a movie and this was the opening scene. Everything just felt like it was in its right place (Another song whuch would hit me in a similair way from Radiohead).

Music has this effect. When everything hits right and you're in the right frame of mind, the mood is there. The world is matching you. Music gives us a soundtrack to live with. It takes the mundane and makes it spicy. We're suddenly not just another person out of millions or billions living our lives—we're special. We're the main character.

And headphones give us this.

With headphones, we went from being able to just listen to music on boomboxes at a particular moment, with other people possibly knowing those around us, to having a personalized experience, just ourselves, in our own world. That has resonated with people. It's driven headphone sales for years. It's created companies. It's motivated engineers to make headphones better or create a more immersive experience because of the profound impact it has on us, to have our own little soundtrack to accompany our own little lives.

But as time has gone on, headphones have evolved. Not just to be used for moments when the mood is right and everything at this moment is synced up. No—it's become more than that.

Over the years, it seems as though having headphones on is not just about having a soundtrack to our lives. It's about shutting the world out. Instead of accompanying the world, headphones are more and more being used to block it all out.

Recent sound designs for headphones consistently emphasize noise cancellation as a key feature. Ads say things like: "Our headphones are so good they'll cancel out the world around you." And yeah—they're for real about that. You don't have to hear the world. The cars, the yelling—none of it.

And it feeds into a bit of dissociation.

Back in the days when we didn't have noise cancellation, we were accompanied by music in our lives. We could still hear everything around us—the uncomfortable bits as well as the joyous bits of life. And that was special.

But now it's as if people don't want to hear that. This is the prevalence of noise cancellation. It brings the thought to mind: why are we trying to cancel out the world?

What's going on that makes us want to put on headphones and sink away into music—or a podcast, or an audiobook—something to distract us from what's going on around us?

I work in the city, so of course I constantly see people going around with headphones on, cranked up, head down, just in their own little world. At first, I understood it—because I did the same. However, as time has passed, and I've taken a step back to reflect on myself and others, I've noticed that it's not just about being in our own little world. It's about shutting the world out.

There are many people who are unhoused on the streets who look up and ask for change, assistance, or a hand. But the people who go past them are just in their own world(myself included), completely disassociated from what's going on around them.

Sometimes accidents even happen because people are so disassociated that they don't hear the beeping of a car horn. Or they don't see out of their peripheral vision that something is coming their way—be it a friend or danger.

Is it the discomfort of it that is driving this? Is the world so tumultuous and uncomfortable that people would rather tune it all out with something more pleasant—a curated audio experience just for you—so that you don't have to look at the burning fire that is our society around you?

The stresses can go away. Just put your headphones on and don't think about it.

And in this way, headphones have gone from something pleasant and enjoyable to something less pleasant. Instead of having a soundtrack to accompany our lives, we are isolating ourselves from the experiences around us.

And sometimes I understand it. It is uncomfortable. It's hard to look at the person who is unhoused or struggling as they ask you for help, knowing that you can't help them and that you have to say no. It hurts a little. And it hurts even more when you know you could help them, but you choose not to.

A person's motivations are their own, whether or not they choose to help. But it is being in that situation that I think causes a form of internal strife or internal agitation within us that people would rather not face. And it's easy to not face it when you can cancel it all out.

So we do cancel it out.

If I can't hear them, then I can't acknowledge them. And if I don't acknowledge them, then they weren't really there, were they?

It's a thought I'm sure many people have as they make their way through the city. But people are there. And the world is there.

The deeper people sink into this audio dissociation, I think, the more disconnected we become from the world around us. The uncomfortability that we sink away from with headphones isn't something to be taken lightly, because it's also the uncomfortability of life itself.

And that, I think, is a shame. Because life, and all of its good moments and its bad moments, are uncomfortable. And that uncomfortability is an experience that we should be grateful to have. Because, as much as it sucks, it means we are alive.

When you can't hear the argument around you because it makes you uncomfortable—and perhaps it triggers an anxious response because your parents argued and it brings back memories of parental strife and a divorce and familial trauma—you're also canceling out the sounds of a friend saying hi that you may not have seen out of your peripheral vision.

You're canceling out the sounds of a bird. Or of that wind brushing through the trees.

You know the sound. It's magnificent. It sounds incredible when the wind hits the trees just right, and it makes that soft wooshing sound.

These are the moments that I think we disassociate and miss, in an effort to comfort ourselves from the world around us.

And I think it is a reason why headphones—as good as they are and as wonderful as they are—should be taken with more caution.

When you're putting your headphones on, really ask yourself:

Are you enjoying the music to heighten your experience of life and to give yourself that main character moment as you experience the world?

Or are you just canceling the world out, closing yourself off to what's happening around you?

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