When asked in the past which sense I would like to keep if I could only have one, I always responded with sight. I couldn’t even imagine a world where there was no possibility of viewing people’s facial expressions, the beauty of nature, or reading text on a page. In my opinion, it was far less of a loss to not be able to hear, smell, taste, or touch something. But lately I’ve been re-evaluating my decision.
Certainly, the best scenario would be to keep all five senses. However, if left with only one sense, I no longer know which one I’d choose. You see, within the last week, I’ve developed an ear infection and lost hearing in one ear and been left with only muffled sounds in the other. It’s an extremely frustrating and limiting situation, and it’s made me realize more consciously the importance of hearing. As a musical person, I always knew it would be difficult to not be able to hear well. And working with people makes hearing an absolutely vital sense to have in the emergency room.
Hearing is helpful in everyday situations as well though. For example, I was driving the other day and an ambulance crossed the intersection four cars in front of me; I couldn’t hear the sirens and it kind of freaked me out. I won’t say there aren’t any advantages to hearing loss though…lately, it’s far easier to ignore the crying kid in the back row of the movie theater or the road noise while trying to fall asleep. There are definite disadvantages though. Like not being able to hear your alarm or needing to turn my head so my right ear can hear the conversation.
I’m not too panicked about the situation yet because I still have some antibiotics to finish off, but hopefully this won’t be a prolonged effect. In the meantime, I just keep waiting and praying and hoping I’ll be able to hear clearly soon. It couldn’t come soon enough.
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