Can’t we just have quiet, please? As we sit in the physician’s waiting room, or automobile service cubicle, or oral surgeon’s office; as we wander through the aisles of a drugstore or department store?

Is it always necessary to endure pop music piped in from a local radio station so loudly on the intercom an elderly patient can’t hear his name called twice? Why are we forced to sit in any waiting room where a blatting television is perched on a shelf too high to reach the off button?

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), in his “Studies in Pessimism: Psychological Observations,” exactly expressed my sentiments:

“Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruptions. It is not only an interruption, but also a disruption of thought.”

Not all noise disrupts my thoughts, certainly not the familiar foghorn I’m so accustomed to hearing that, often, I don’t. Boat engines cranking up before dawn are merely part of the background sounds; so too, the grinding of the school bus slowing to round the corner, or the beeps from the fuel oil truck backing out the driveway.

Perhaps noise is in the ear of the beholder. And perhaps we should be more courteous of other ears.

You can’t stomach my opera music, and I can’t stand your rock. Your rumbling, rusted muffler annoys me; my leaf blower drives you mad.

I think it should be against the law for any driver to play rap music at a stoplight with the car windows down. You hate country and western tunes whining out of my truck.

You think a co-worker shouldn’t hum so much and, worse, the ones who dare to whistle while they work should be fired.

Your personalized cell phone ring is obnoxious. My gum popping makes you flinch.

Why, then, do we have to be subjected to nonstop radio or television while corralled in waiting rooms, restaurants, shops or other public spaces? Why can’t we wait, eat, shop – and think – without the distraction of bebop or hip-hop or oldie-goldies magnified by speaker systems over which we have no control?

Arthur Schopenhauer would have asked no less.

In this holiday shopping season ahead, could it be possible to lower the noise level, tone down the volume, just enough so we can still hear the tinkling of Salvation Army bells?