Thanks to our eyelids, we can, when our head hits the pillow, switch off our vision. Some of us also have “earlids.” When I remove my cochlear implant processor and hearing aid, I cannot hear my own voice. When my head hits the pillow, I hear only the sound of silence.
As one who inhabits the worlds of both hearing and deafness, I am amazed by what you likely take for granted—the gift of hearing. And I experience the benefits, the misfortunes, and the humor of not-hearing.
The wonder of hearing
Hearing is our Cinderella sense—the underappreciated poor sister to vision, which receives information from millions of photoreceptors (compared to only 16,000 hearing-receptor hair cells) and which has 10 times the devoted brain area. Visual processing is akin to taking a house apart bit by bit, and then, through the work of millions of specialized workers, reassembling it—all in a nanosecond, resulting in motion, three dimensions, and color. Amazing.
But hearing is amazing, too. Imagine creatures in another galaxy who could engage in mind-to-mind communication by vibrating air molecules to transmit thoughts. But this is what we do when chatting across the dinner table. With an astonishing skill we hardly comprehend, we convert our immaterial thoughts into vocal apparatus vibrations that shoot waves of air molecules through space. On impact with another’s eardrums, the vibrations—transmitted by the middle ear bones—trigger fluid waves down the cochlea, which bend its hair cell receptors like wheat swaying in the wind, triggering neural impulses to speed their way up the auditory nerve to our brain, which, wonder of wonders, somehow decodes meaning.
I am wonderstruck at what is so ordinary, yet so extraordinary. I empathize with Sherlock Holmes: “As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be.” As Holmes appreciated, ordinary life “is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind . . . could invent.” And thus my urge, as Mary Oliver commends in her poem, “Sometimes,” to declare my astonishment:
“Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”
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The gifts of not-hearing
Hearing is a godsend. Those jostling air molecules enable us to communicate, to detect emotion, to enjoy music, to sense danger. Yet there are also compensatory blessings to earlids that enable not-hearing.
Not-hearing supports focused concentration. I am writing while on a long flight, whose 86-decibel sound (measured by my phone app) is surely noisy to my seatmates. But not to me, because I can dial down the sound. When trying to read or to record your thoughts, you may find a noisy coffee shop or nearby hallway noise distracting, which is less a problem for those of us with hearing loss.
Not-hearing supports sleep. Has your sleep been disturbed by hotel hallway noise or car horns? Not a problem for me.
Not-hearing can minimize stress. Toxic noise jars most people’s nerves, which may increase stress for those in loud workplaces or in construction zones and airport neighborhoods. Not-hearing makes for less sensory overload.
Not-hearing can heighten awareness of other senses. Thanks to sensory compensation, and with auditory cortex tissue available for other uses, those profoundly deaf may experience an enhancement of other senses, including vision and associated lipreading.
The gaffes and humor of mishearing
For the gifts of not-hearing, we hard-of-hearing people pay a large price. Without the benefit of today’s digital hearing instruments and cochlear implants, my mother—who bequeathed me with a mutation on gene WFS1 at the DFNA6/14/38 locus (the least of her gifts)—spent the last decade of her life in silence, cut off from fluent communication beyond written notes and rudimentary signing.
In the world of 2025, I can, with my “earlids” open, hear, with ample volume. But much of my hearing is akin to an out-of-focus picture. This morning, my Heathrow departure gate made announcements other people seemingly understood—but were muffled and inaccessible to my hearing.
In a crowded restaurant, we hearing-challenged folks might hear our tablemate saying, “The shiplefona,” while typical hearing people, aurally swimming amid a babble of voices, somehow manage to hear, “The ship left on a . . .” If you are a typical hearing person, I am awestruck by your ability to selectively isolate one voice among many: I do not comprehend how you do it.
There is, however, more to hearing than meets the ear. Hearing involves both bottom-up sensory input and top-down interpretation, influenced by our expectations. Depending on the context, you may hear someone reporting on “the stuff he knows” or “the stuffy nose.” Did the newscaster just report on a “meteorologist” or “meaty urologist”? Was that couple’s relationship disrupted by their experience with “bad sects” or “bad sex”?
With failure to hear and with mishearing come social gaffes and occasional laughs. “Not having understood what was said in a group,” my mother reminisced, “I would chime in and say the same thing someone else had just said—and everyone would laugh. I would be so embarrassed, I wanted to fall through the floor.” I can relate, after so many times missing the joke that all others have heard, or not understanding a student’s question, or not catching someone’s name, or repeating what someone has already said. Moreover, struggling to hear is just plain tiring.
But it can also be hilarious. At one family gathering I was stunned to hear my sister say, “I had a picture of an autopsy blown up.” “You enlarged a picture of what?” I gasped. “Of an autumn scene.” Hearing Health editor Paula Bonillas gave her daughter castanets for Christmas . . . when really she had wished for a casting net.
My hard-of-hearing physicist friend Paul Davies recalls visiting an Australian beach, where a woman emerged from the men’s bathroom he was approaching. “You had sex today?” she cheerfully seemed to ask. The stunned Davies wondered how to respond, before realizing that the women’s bathroom was broken, so she was explaining that the men’s bathroom was “Unisex today.”
Much as Scots can tell one another Scottish jokes, those of us in the hearing loss community can tell in-jokes, such as about the three golfers with hearing loss: “It’s windy,” remarks one. “No, says the second, it’s Thursday.” “Me, too,” says the third. “Let’s go get a drink.”
So, hearing is a gift. Not-hearing is sometimes also a gift, though more often a challenge, albeit occasionally with comic relief.
But mostly hearing is a near-miracle. From a sender’s formless thoughts to air pressure waves to mechanical ear vibrations to fluid cochlear waves to decoded electrochemical impulses, the end result is a marvel: wireless mind-to-mind communication. Who could have imagined? As the Psalmist exclaimed, we truly are “wonderfully made.”
David Myers, a Hope College social psychologist, authors psychology textbooks and trade books, including his recent essay collection, How Do We Know Ourselves? Curiosities and Marvels of the Human Mind.
