My sense of smell is duller without my hearing aid in. Although I don't get much useful sound from it I still need sound around me otherwise I feel dissociated from the world, like I'm not functioning properly until I've been switched on. I think my brain needs to process some information from sound as well as everything coming in from the other senses and if sound is missing, my brain can't process the rest.
When I am driving I have to have my MP3 player on, not specifically for listening to music but to stop me trying to listen to the sounds the car makes. My brain ends up desperately trying to process all the noise and it can't and I just end up worrying whether or not that noise is normal, is the engine about to blow up, am I over-revving, what's going on???! So if I take the sound of the car away, I feel the car through my feet instead and my driving is much better as a result.
Information is around us in so many forms and there are different ways of de-coding it all.
When I'm in a club, I feel the beat of the music through my feet (or just force of the air vibrating) and use that for dancing. When I'm in gym classes, I'm moving too much to feel the beat and rely entirely on sight to move at the right time to keep up.
When people talk to me I have to lipread to understand but interestingly enough, if I can't see their eyes (sunglasses for example), I understand nothing at all. Body language is hugely important. In meetings I can tell if someone has a hidden agenda, is lying or not giving us all the information we need even if they are appearing to be open and saying all the right things. I don't even know I'm processing these things, I can't articulate my gut feeling but it is there.
So in many ways I see more, I gain more than if I were 'badly' using sound alone to interpret my environment.
If you lose one of those senses, you either find a way to adapt and heighten your use of other methods of extracting information from your surroundings, or you don't- I suspect if you don't it is because you are still trying to use the sense that you don't have and not allowing your brain to process the rest of the scene.
When you've grown up without, you automatically tap into the other methods available to you. That's why I'm adament that I do things differently as opposed to being lacking in some way because I can't hear. When I play music, I'll 'hear' it differently, I'll gain different things from it but still, I love music.
So perhaps in answer to your post, you use what you have access to and having less of one sense than another just gives you a different experience of something, rather than a loss of experience. Ad astra per aspera
You got me wondering now how the Deaf (political group) relate to the blind? Is there a "capital B" Blind group? I was wondering how sign language would be considered by a Blind person. Could it be seen as a form of discrimination? Thinking about this I wondered if there is a finger-to-palm-touch language. That would be great to learn.
Anyway, thanks again for the diary and your comments. Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
There is a sort of sign language for deafblind people where you use the palm of the hand and fingers to spell and communicate. I've seen it being used, I think it is limited especially because many words have to be spelt out and it takes time to do so.
I don't think sign language would be considered a form of discrimination since the language comes about as a necessity for Deaf people. As with all hearing people who don't know sign, an interpreter would be needed to aid communication.
Glad that diary was useful for you! Ad astra per aspera
