Sounds of Silence – Learning to Listen

I have a significant hearing loss. As a consequence of a combination of otosclerosis (hardening of the tiny bones in the middle ear) and auditory nerve damage, I can perceive only about 60% of what a “normal” person hears. This has been a slowly progressive disability, and for years I compensated for this by pretending to hear/understand and by unconsciously learning how to lip read. “Look at me so I can hear you!” was being said with increasing frequency. So about five years ago I swallowed my pride and conceded that I needed a little “help”. Ergo, for me hearing aids were no longer a stigma of getting old. 

These little digital wonders were ridiculously expensive and not covered by health insurance (I guess deafness isn’t as important as erectile dysfunction!). But WOW did they change my auditory perception of the world around me! The first time I popped those little guys in my ears, I heard sounds that I hadn’t heard in years – like the whirring of the washer during the spin cycle, the constant on and off rumbles of the furnace fan, the rustle of leaves underfoot and the incessant traffic on the nearby road. The television speakers no longer had to strain at their decibel limits and the neighbors no longer knew what programs we were viewing that evening. And I actually could discern the subtle “ssss” and “fffff” sounds that I was voicing! 

The world is an absurdly noisy place. It actually was too much auditory stimulation for me in those first few weeks as my brain was retraining itself to discriminate meaningful sounds from ambient clamor. After a long day at work, I occasionally longed for some quiet and I made it a habit to remove the hearing aids in the early evening. On Sundays, part of my celebration of the Sabbath was to escape all the ruckus in this crazy world by eschewing the hearing aids for the entire day. I longed for my sounds of silence.

Not so on the Camino, though, as I wore the hearing aids from sunrise to sunset. Most of our days were spent outside in God’s glorious creation, and, except for the brief periods that the Camino paralleled a highway, one could focus on the sounds of Nature – the hoot of an owl, the whoosh of the wind, the crunch of gravel underfoot, the cowbells in the distant fields, the dissonant crowing of the roosters- and the need to focus on the sounds of bicycle pilgrims approaching rapidly from behind to avoid a peregrino-bicigrino collision! There were also long periods of true silence, even when walking with others, when one could exercise contemplation or listen to the music in one’s own head. I had no desire to take a break from wearing hearing aids because every sound or every silence was the pure unadulterated joyful “noise” of what is important in life.

In our lives, we need to learn the difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is a function, a result of sound waves causing movement in the tiny bones of the middle ear, stimulating small hairs in the inner ear to send impulses via the auditory nerve so the brain can perceive sound. But listening is a totally different concept – it is the interpretation and appreciation of the sounds we hear. People talk at each other and hear each other, but many times do not listen to what each is saying – certainly so much more so in this present political climate. Reasonable and respectful discourse is dying, as each side steadfastly clings to its “facts”, not even amenable to listening to, understanding and appreciating what the other side has to say. Maybe we all need to remove our hearing aids once in a while, savor the sounds of silence, and insert our listening aids instead!

The joyful strains of music are frequently heard on the Camino-the lone fiddler in the woods, the bagpiper at the pilgrim’s portal to the cathedral square, or a traditional Galician band in Santiago. Enjoy this uplifting performance!

Author: caminomusings

Searching for illumination, trying to be a positive life force View all posts by caminomusings