Sight vs. Sound

Memory hides from me where the inspiration came from, but as a teenager I would enjoy asking friends a certain question. I would say, "If you had to be either deaf or blind, which you rather be?"

Most of my friends usually thought about it for a few seconds, and then they replied that they would rather be deaf. Or, in other words, they valued their sight more than their ability to hear. I began to think of this as a typical response from people in England, because most of us in this country have a desire to be independent.

Out of the five senses in our bodies, the sense of sight is probably the one that gives us most independence. Lose your sight and you can't see in front of yourself, can't read signs, and can't distinguish between colour coded items.You need to ask a helper what is going on around you, and feel which direction a guide-dog is pulling you towards for safety when walking.

If you lost your sight, you would miss out on anything which can be seen, such as landscapes and art. But after those visuals, and the amount of independence, there isn't much else which is lost. Conversation with other people, something probably taken for granted, would not lessen, but probably become even more of a pleasure because of how much your skill at listening would improve. Books can be read in braille. Nature's textures can still be felt.

You might not be surprised that my own answer to my question was that I would prefer to lose my sight and keep my sense of hearing, if given the choice. But for me, this is largely because to the parts of life which I know I appreciate more.

For example, I am rarely excited by any visual form of art, but I have a passion for music, both playing it and listening to it. No amount of hours spent in art galleries could compensate for the loss of my music collection or the ability to play an instrument with others in a band.

I also value teaching, specifically by word of mouth. I know that in a lecture theatre setting, I am thinking more about what I hear from a teacher than from what I can see. Office trainers know that the visuals provided in a presentation are there to enable the visual-orientated attendees to easily focus and remember the content, but the content itself is rarely just visual. Even graphs and diagrams can be summarised in words in less time than it took to create them.

So what would you choose, if you had to? Would you prefer to lose your ability to see, or to hear? But when you think you have an answer to this, I am also intrigued whether you decided on your answer purely because of how much you value your independence, or because you know which parts of life really matter to you?

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