Listen to the sound of the trumpet. What do you hear?
Sounds evoke feelings, of course. And so what you and I hear takes place as much in our hearts as in our eardrums. What a sound elicits in our hearts depends upon our experience and association with that sound.
Some sounds, you know, are so inherently appealing that their effect is almost universally positive: a baby's giggle, for example, or the sounds of nature on a quiet summer evening come to mind. By contrast, certain other sounds have a predictably negative effect: the proverbial fingernails on a chalkboard or the deliberately unsettling sound of a smoke alarm.
Of course, you and I live in a time when we can be rather selective about the sounds that we hear. Much more so than previous generations.
It used to be that every te…