My first house in the city was on a freeway offramp; the noise of it was inescapable, but after a while you can convince yourself you're used to it. The constant roar fades into the background, it stops keeping you up at night, and eventually you just stop thinking about it. The noise becomes a part of you, a part of the city.
I was thinking earlier of something I read once: "cities aren't loud; cars are loud." And it's true. You can hear it, sometimes, when you're out walking, or riding a bike, and for a brief moment a silence descends, and you can hear everything: your footsteps, the birds, the wind in the trees the falling rain. You feel this sense of calm, of freedom. A weight lifts. You didn't even realize how oppressive that weight was before, but now, everything seems so bright and beautiful--and then the cars come back. Even deep into the night, they always come back.
It just takes one. These moments of stillness are always fleeting, and always the weight settles back in, and having so recently known the calm, it sits a little less comfortably. You have tasted, just for a moment, what it is like to be rid of that constant sound, dulling your senses, suppressing the little sounds of life.
