What is it like to be hearing?

I think that sometimes even with annoying sounds its just INTERESTING. Honestly hearing is my favorite sense, and maybe that's just because my passion for music, but like right now I am typing this out i hear the clicking of the keyboard, the sound of my breathing, the world outside.
And then again there's always something to not be happy about, nothing is perfect. Like hearing hurtful words or something that is repulsive.
 
I see, In overall, no matter how much you guys love to hear but at the same time there are some sounds that are annoying and there are some sounds that are also pleasant.

It's interesting to see how the insights are to what it is like to be a hearing person. That's something I will never really understand because I've been deaf since birth. At most, I don't even hear anything at all and the hearing aids doesn't even help me at all.

Thank you all for sharing your insights. It has gave a lot of thought-provoking insights and it has gave me a better understanding of how it is like to be a hearing person.
 
jillio said:
:gpost::gpost:

I have often told deaf friends: "Don't grieve for your lack of hearing. It ain't all its cracked up to be!"

By the same token, despite the reality of deafness, or the reality of hearing, we still have stereotypes that lead to discrimination based on those stereotypes that has absolutely nothing to do with hearing or not hearing. We live within a stratified society, and part of that stratification is based on superificial characteristics such as sensory function and skin color. Just as there is a phenomena in America that is known as "white priviledge", there is also a phenomena known as "hearing priviledge". Most white people reap the benefits of the phenomena on a daily basis without it ever entering intotheir consciousness. In fact, it is so far outside their consciousness that they will usually claim it does not exist, despite the evidence that it most certainly does. However, someone who does not receive this benefit, such as a person of color, is accutely aware of it. The same with hearing and deaf.
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Amazing post!! Very true...
 
mariano said:
At the end of the day, life is the same thing, but with less complications. Truth be told, the people that I have met who are blind or deaf are often times happier than the average person. In addition, they are more down to earth. Then again, I guess it is all relative to the individual.
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That's how I think too. I used to think if I was hearing, I would be happy and it got to the point where I would constantly be obsessive about it. Now, I dont even think about it..just do my thing and live life to the fullest whenever I can.
 
I think, like someone said earlier, that some people (myself included) take hearing for granted. I notice that whatever I'm doing I like to have music playing in the background even if I'm not focusing on it. Right now, I've got GNR playing and I hadn't even realized it. I'm not sure that I'd call it soothing but it's just something that I like to have playing in the background.

Through years of practice, I've learned (and this is absolutely serious) I've learned to tune out my mom so that I'm not actually focused on what she's saying and I'm able to pick out the important parts of what she's saying all while running a grocery list in my head. Maybe it's multi-tasking. In high school, I remember never taking notes and just being able to retain most of the information just by listening to my teacher's lecture. Maybe this is to blame?

As of right now, one major benefit to hearing is the Metallica concert i'll be attending oct. 1 in s. fla!
 
I think it is much like it is the way a deaf person sees things. When you are in the country there is not much visual stimulation, it's relaxing. There is not much noise in the country either, it is very relaxing,

In the city can only imagine how much a deaf person has to use their eyes, sound is like that in the city. VERY busy and noisy.

When we are talking to someone and there is background noise it would be like if you were at the deaf club and everyone is talking, you see the movement but you don't focus on it, only the person you are talking to. If we focus on the sound we want to hear we can hear that sound the loudest amoung all the back ground noise.

The only difference is when you close your eyes the sight goes away...unless hearing people are in a deep sleep ( and can be awoke by loud sounds) the sounds go away. deaf people can see light through closed eyes,like we can still hear in the dark.

I hope this makes sense?
 
What I like most about hearing is that I can listen to my mother telling folk stories while I fall asleep. I love to hear the waterfall, the birds chirping, my family laughing and chatting, my friends comforting me over the phone, soothing music and much more.
What I dislike about hearing is the damn noise of busy streets, people arguing, lecturing, the radio every morning and more.
 
I personally wish, borned deaf ppl could hear the sound of the water falling in a cascade..
Music (all kind)
The wind
Thunders
Rain (on different surfaces)
Voice of their beloved
How poetry sounds
The sound of the balls in different sports
If you love cars, the sound of a powerfull Ferrari &/or Lambo :P

That, and their branches of that, is pretty much i can think about it now :)
 
Waxy said:
I personally wish, borned deaf ppl could hear the sound of the water falling in a cascade..
Music (all kind)
The wind
Thunders
Rain (on different surfaces)
Voice of their beloved
How poetry sounds
The sound of the balls in different sports
If you love cars, the sound of a powerfull Ferrari &/or Lambo :P

That, and their branches of that, is pretty much i can think about it now :)
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A lot of Deaf can hear these. :P
 
I love this thread. It's true; I'm sure many Deaf people get asked what it's like to be Deaf, but rarely am I asked what it's like to be a hearing person. Now that I live with Deaf roommates, we share experiences from different perspectives and I can't help but notice different ways that we react to things. I'm almost always turning sharply at a sound while my roommate will go on talking, having noticed nothing odd. Sirens, banging, screams, etc, are extremely distracting, especially when I'm trying to sign with a friend. It pulls my focus. Also, I work in a restaurant with live music. The music is wonderful, but my goodness, it's loud! Trying to hear my customers is extremely frustrating and more than once, I wish they knew sign language to make it easier to communicate! I've often thought that a Deaf person working in my restaurant would have no more difficulty than I because either way, we can't hear our customers. In fact, they would probably find it easier because of the lack of extraneous noise.

That being said, as a singer and a dancer, I love to listen to music. It can change my mood, for better or worse, depending on the song. I love going to to the theatre and seeing musicals. Also, I love being out in nature and hearing the sounds of the Earth.

I think this is a great thread for exploring. :) Thank you, Jolie77!
 
When I was hearing, listening was effortless. Now, it's arduous. I've always been a very visual person, and I rely on visual information more and more.
 
sallylou said:
When I was hearing, listening was effortless. Now, it's arduous. I've always been a very visual person, and I rely on visual information more and more.
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:gpost: I think this is the main difference between being hearing and deaf/hoh.
 
I'm mildly hard-of-hearing from birth, and wear hearing aids all the time. So I feel that I can kind of answer from both perspectives:

Things I can hear that I like:
my cat purring
heartbeat of a significant other
music
rain and thunderstorms


Things I can't hear/struggle with hearing/understanding (good or bad)
high pitched sounds like some car/house alarms, or an oven timer beeping
conversation with a softly spoken person or someone with a big moustache
the lyrics of songs
people with strong regional accents
having to watch films with subtitles on and the subtitles don't match the bits I can catch them saying
new words- jargon- that I can't see written down and don't understand what's being said

At school people used to ask me what it was like to be hard of hearing. All I could come up with was, without my hearing aids it's like having a pillow over your head all the time, things are muffled and hard to understand. Even with them, it's sometimes difficult- the beginnings/ends of sentences are to understand if I'm not aware people are talking to me, I'm not sure if someone's said 'don't do this' or 'do this', and very high pitched sounds are a gamble depending on background noise and if I'm concentrating.

I guess the question I've answered, really, is 'What is it like to be me?', as everyone's hearing is different, not everyone will have the same experiences or problems as me. I wear glasses and there are still some things I can't read- signs with really small print, or things with an unusual font.
 
To be honest, even though I have a cochlear implant and I love it, I do wish I was hearing. I love hearing music and things like that. But there are moments that I wish I was hearing, like in order to interact with people such as making a order for some fast food at McDonald's or being able to use the phone without using the uber-annoying ip-relay and stuff. I wonder sometimes if being hearing would make my life a bit easier sometimes, but not really. Just that some days I do get frustrated while most days I am quite happy with my CI. I guess that is just the way I am. I promise, I am not an audist or anything like that. I just wish I had learned to speak and learned to understand speech, in addition to signing, I wish I had the full toolbox approach. I did not learn English nor ASL until age 6. Before that it was MSL which I learned from my Mexican Deaf friends I used to play with all the time (they and their family had just moved to my city from Mexico and I ended up playing with them and thus ended up learning THEIR sign language instead of ASL. Odd situation, huh?). My mom did not know LSM nor ASL until I went to the state school for the deaf at age 6, that's when she learned ASL. I still have some peppered LSM ever since then, even when I sign today. And I am learning more and more LSM since moving here so...yeah, I use more LSM now. I still even have English grammar issues today because English is my third language. Ah well. I don't mind. I am doing well with English anyway.
 
sallylou, u wrote about listening being effortless before and now different - well, I am finding that too, now. I also have always been extremely visual-tactile anyway but now I find that aspect of myself more important. I will say that listening before for me, wasn't always effortless because of the LD or auditory processing issue - because many times I heard something but didn't comprehend it, hence my visual learning style.

I think there are just as many "what it's like to be hearing" stories as "what is like to be Deaf" stories-
 
melissa said:
I'm mildly hard-of-hearing from birth, and wear hearing aids all the time. So I feel that I can kind of answer from both perspectives:

Things I can hear that I like:
my cat purring
heartbeat of a significant other
music
rain and thunderstorms


Things I can't hear/struggle with hearing/understanding (good or bad)
high pitched sounds like some car/house alarms, or an oven timer beeping
conversation with a softly spoken person or someone with a big moustache
the lyrics of songs
people with strong regional accents
having to watch films with subtitles on and the subtitles don't match the bits I can catch them saying
new words- jargon- that I can't see written down and don't understand what's being said

At school people used to ask me what it was like to be hard of hearing. All I could come up with was, without my hearing aids it's like having a pillow over your head all the time, things are muffled and hard to understand. Even with them, it's sometimes difficult- the beginnings/ends of sentences are to understand if I'm not aware people are talking to me, I'm not sure if someone's said 'don't do this' or 'do this', and very high pitched sounds are a gamble depending on background noise and if I'm concentrating.

I guess the question I've answered, really, is 'What is it like to be me?', as everyone's hearing is different, not everyone will have the same experiences or problems as me. I wear glasses and there are still some things I can't read- signs with really small print, or things with an unusual font.
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Sounds like you have a severe loss in the high frequency range. You cannot hear a oven timer beeping or car alarm? This is with a hearing aid or without?
 
I've always envied people who can eavesdrop on others conversations. It seems they always know what's going on ahead of time. Besides the fact that I think it is very rude, I do wish sometimes I could.

Now as I get older, my perfect eyesight has moved to "farsightedness", and I can no longer read labels on small cans and often price tags in stores without putting my glasses on. I'm finding myself missing that the most, probably because I'd always enjoyed good eyesight.

As for my hearing, I was born hard of hearing and badly enough that I needed hearingaides and speech therapy at age 5 for school. It's easy to daydream when you get bored because you can't hear everything that is being said at school. The subjects I excelled in were no problem, the ones I didn't like were easy to switch off from.

I have moderately severe to severe hearing now and so there is less for me to hear without my hearingaids. It's great in that I can get a good night's sleep without noises waking me. The neighbours can have parties and I am oblivious. It mades me nervous when people come to the door and I can't hear them properly to know who is there before opening it. Now I have a stained glass door I can see who is there so that helps alot.

I've never been able to listen to a song and pick up on all the words. Until captioning and the loop system I now have I could never really follow a movie properly because I missed out on so much of the dialogue if I couldnt lipread them or if there isn't enough clarity.

When I got my new digital hearing aids I could hear white noise in the office and it drove me nuts until my brain learned it. I didn't know how many sounds I'd missed out on until I got my new hearing aids. I could identify most, but had to learn other sounds I hadn't heard in years, or perhaps never did hear.

I make the most of what I have because it will slowly go and I will end up like my mother with zero decibel hearing without hearing aids on. Some people speak to you like you are an idiot instead of just hoh. Many people (including loved ones) don't understand that having hearingaids doesn't give me perfect hearing like people with glasses. You have to be accepting of who you are in order to keep your confidence up. You have to learn to use what you have in the best way possible to help yourself because no one else can do that for you.

I probably haven't explained myself as others here about hearing. I just appreciate what I have and adapt as best I can as things change.
 
Hi Kokonut, yes most of my loss is in the high frequencies. I always wonder in hearing tests if I'm hearing a high frequency or my ears are just ringing/tinnitus from all the beeps! I would describe it more specifically but I can't find a recent audiogram- found one from '94 and '98 but none since I got my ditigal aids (2006). I wear my hearing aids all the time, except evenings when I'm in bed reading. I'm a slacker and do lapse when the batteries run out etc, but after a week or two the difference is obvious as I do struggle in conversation.

I'm told I'm 'practically normal' (I don't know whether to be offended or just cackle madly and say 'Noooormallll? Meeee?') in the speech frequencies- roughly straight across about 0-20db, but that doesn't stop me from missing things at the start and end of sentences, or in pubs etc. The audiogram slopes down from there to about 90db at most, that's as best I can describe it without a recent one to hand, and I don't know much about them. I'd be interested to see a separate audiogram plotting everything with/without aids- might ask next time I go, as I need to get more microphone covers for my aids. I do get miffed at being told I'm 'practically normal'- I end up feeling guilty for asking people to face me, speak slower etc.

Depending on background noise I can't hear the oven alarm (especially if I'm upstairs with the TV on), but I think our particular model does have a more high-pitched tone than most ovens. The phone is high-pitched too, and only has daft ringtones that sound like bad computer game music, so I don't often hear that if I have the TV on.

With car alarms, it depends. I think I can hear most of them- they're always going off round here, and are a bloody nuisance! but some are especially high pitched and I just think I have tinnitus until someone else comments on it too

edit: I forgot- I can hear song lyrics, I just don't understand them unless it's a song with very little background music. I have to look them up then I can follow. Eg- Take That, Relight My Fire- when this came out I was 8-10ish (I'm 24 now) and remember hearing it on the car radio- I thought the lyrics were 'Reline...Maf...ia' and Take That were singing about the mafia, or something- it just didn't make sense.

khar59, when I first got my digital aids after not wearing any for years, it was horrible- it was like an assault on the senses, I could hear rustling, breathing, a constant humming that took me a while to figure out- my room is next to the hot water tank and it was the central heating system. Everything was loud, and there was more going on- I didn't realise how much I wasn't hearing until I got them. That scared me slightly. I can hear birds chirping and traffic and people talking, without my hearing aids, but with them there was so much more going on around me.
 
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This is a great question!

I'm hearing and I've been sitting here trying to figure out a good way to describe what it's like to be able to hear. The my roommate felt the need to point out that my hearing isn't normal and I'm not a good person to ask. Whatever, I'm answering anyway :lol:

I have ADD and sometimes noises drive me crazy. It's like I can't hear past them and everything else but that noise gets drowned out. Like people tapping their pens during class or snoring. I'm sure those little sounds bother a lot of people. I'd liken it to trying to eat something, but having it flavored with something that ruins the rest of it. Like eating icecream that is salty or spaghetti that has cinnamon. The flavor is the only thing you notice and you can't taste anything else after a few minutes. Or maybe it's like trying to write a paper or watch tv while someone is tapping your shoulder. Obviously, ADD isn't just a hearing/noise thing, but I think it makes irritating sounds worse sometimes.

The other thing I have that's a little less than normal is I'm tone deaf. I have perfect hearing, but not perfect perception. I can't tell the difference between relative pitches. This doesn't really affect my life noticeably at all - I still enjoy music and all that. But I'm entirely incapable of learning tonal languages. That's how they discovered I'm tone impaired :laugh2: I thought I'd expand on my language skills by taking chinese. Fail! The teacher actually referred me to the research department of another college that was doing studies about tone deafness. They suggested that it has something to do with brain function, either because of genetics or because of lack of musical education. What I mean is, I can hear the sounds but I can't hear the difference in the sounds. Chinese relies on pitch to differentiate between words (at least, I think that's what the tones are for). The teacher would say one word and then another word that everyone else could hear the difference between, but I swore it was the same word.

It's funny that someone mentioned the country is quiet and relaxing. To me, it's just a different set of noises. Instead of car horns and trains, you have birds and bugs. Even though it is quieter, I find the silence to be really loud. That's probably one of the weirdest things about being able to hear -- in a way, silence can be kind of overwhelming.

Sorry I couldn't describe things better! Sometimes I'm not very good at expressing myself.
 
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