What Good Is It to Gain the World, But Lose Your Sleep?

It’s 2:22 in the morning. My wife just woke me up. She can’t sleep, again.

This happens because our neighbors have two old air conditioning condensers on their property. Located below our window, they make deep throbbing noises.

Though she’s more sensitive than I, and she certainly has more acute hearing, I understand her complaint.

Our climate is what one air conditioning company calls, “Mediterranean.” Even in July and August, evening temperatures rarely remain above a balmy 70–75 degrees, with little or no humidity to complain about.

Therefore, who needs air conditioning, anyway? When the mercury tops 90, which is extremely rare, we might run ours. Otherwise, it’s about heating in the winter, which is silent to us and to neighbors because that unit is located in the attic.

Our neighbors seem to use their AC all the time. Outdoor temperature is irrelevant to them. Wasting electricity and having a bigger carbon stomp print are equally unimportant.

I’ve surmised they don’t realize they can open a window, getting fresh ocean air in the process. Indoor air pollution is said to be about 4 times worse than outdoor, so they’d be doing themselves, the planet, and especially us, a favor to use a low-tech way of cooling their home.

They also don’t realize they can put their climate control settings on the “fan” level and circulate their air without triggering their noisy air conditioning condensers.

My wife has asked them nicely, and insisted not so nicely in the middle of the night, to use their machines ahead of time. She asked them to turn on their system before 9:00 at night to cool their place, turning off the condensers by 11:00. Their home would be comfortable and she could sleep in peace.

It hasn’t worked. Like rebellious children, or don’t-fence-me-in renegades, they seem to take delight in letting the noise rip at all hours.

Of course, if she tries to gut it out without complaining, she is victimized by restless episodes throughout the night as the condensers turn on and off intermittently.

The next day, she’s grumpy.

We have the right to the peaceful occupation of our premises, as do they. We shouldn’t have to withstand a noise nuisance that could be abated. And they shouldn’t have to be disturbed by their doorbell ringing with a complaining neighbor.

Once again, I walked her through our “remedies.” They aren’t pretty. All of them involve costs and risks.

We have a draconian homeowners association that enforces community rules. I’m reluctant to bring this issue to them because they are brutal, imposing fines on noncompliant residents. And what goes around comes around. Inevitably, we’ll run afoul of the rules and our neighbors will complain about us.

Moreover, I’m not sure they are operating outside of their rights. We could use a decibel meter to find out if the noise we’re suffering through is within a permissible range, per the homeowner’s association. Ironically, they could complain about my wife’s repeated complaints to them, asserting she’s the nuisance. Our complaint could raise a ruckus, engendering more neighborly hostility, without doing any good to remedy the problem, and it could even backfire.

The same applies to suing the neighbor for imposing a “private nuisance.” Using a reasonable person standard, the court could agree with the defendants that we are people of “extreme sensibilities,” and our complaints stem from hypersensitivity with which the law does not sympathize.

The short of it is the possibility that we could invest time and money litigating this issue, and end up with even more hostile, defensive, and abusive neighbors.

If there is a bright side to all of this it is the fact that these neighbors are only occasional intruders, and not year round residents of our little paradise. So in a few months, if history repeats itself, they’ll be back inland somewhere, occupying their primary haunt. Their rickety, old boat will be in dry dock, and all will be quiet once more. Still, we will have been through a needlessly sleepless summertime. The ultra-quiet of our scenic, unique, and refreshing lifestyle will have been interrupted. We have been impoverished by the noise, the hostility, and the torture of being repeatedly awakened by midnight machinery.

It is well known that persistently denying sleep, continuously waking up folks every few minutes, is a form of torture. It has been used in brainwashing and as a tool to force criminal confessions out of the innocent.

We may be in a paradise but it’s a paradise lost.

To paraphrase a famous passage, what good is it for a person to gain the entire world, yet lose his sleep?

Not a dang thing, my wife would say. And I’d have to concur, because I’m the one that has to listen to and empathize with her not-unreasonable complaints.

For a while, before moving into this abode, we lived in a nearby port city. We had a delightful ocean view, with gently lapping waves visible from our living and dining areas and balcony.

But throughout the night we could hear the ding-ding-ding noises in the background, coming from the port. And we could spy the huge cranes as they toiled nonstop like the invading scaffolds in the sci-fi movie, War of The Worlds.

Everyone in our community could hear the noise, some more than others, depending on their proximity to it. Therefore, it was impersonal, and its existence actually made our oceanfront community more affordable for all. I once delivered a major speech on Little Palm Island, in Florida. Sharing the dais with a retired U.S. senator from that state, it was a neat event and a beautiful locale.

The sunrises and sunsets were ethereal, with hues of blue, orange, and pink. From behind my special sunglasses, at mid-day I could watch as the gulf waters changed colors.

Before we got into our cars and were ferried back to the mainland, my legs started itching something fierce. I mentioned it to someone who said, “Oh, it’s the no see-ums.”

“It’s the what?” I asked with perplexity.

He explained that no see-ums are tiny pests that bite, so small that you can’t see them, ergo their name.

Which made me philosophize about what Dostoyevsky wrote: “Man is in clover, but the clover isn’t good enough!”

It’s always something, right?

Now let’s consider where to draw the line.

If your environment is keeping you up at night, or causing you the kind of concern that makes you lose sleep, it isn’t worth it, no matter what the benefits are.

I just wish I could transform our neighbors into “no hear-ums.”

Then I could enjoy the riches that are all around me.