Michael Fellowes: Being deaf – the top ten advantages (BSL)

Yes, life is difficult being deaf. Not so much the lack of hearing but the rest of society’s attitudes. But this is my life, my reality. I’m not going to spend my life moaning. I enjoy life. Sure, there are hundreds of disadvantages to being deaf but what are the advantages? Here are my top ten advantages. As ever, only my subjective personal experience.

1. The on/off switch

With my cochlear implant switched off, I hear nothing. I tested it at Silverstone during the British Grand Prix. Switched off, scarlet Ferrari racing cars flashing past me. I couldn’t hear them but I could feel the scream of their engines in my stomach and chest.

Silence – when you choose it – is beautiful. Have you ever been on a long train journey with a baby endlessly crying? Are the roadworks down the street annoying you? In any situation I can choose to switch off my hearing.

Which means . . .

2. Blissful sleep

External noise doesn’t keep me awake. Any city, any noisy situation I can sleep. Working in London our bedroom had the clatter of the Piccadilly and District line trains running behind it. Me? I slept beautifully all night long.

3. Weird sounds

Have you ever spent hours travelling with your hearing aid or implant switched to the ‘T’ position? This is for loop systems and it cuts out all other sounds. Doing this makes you a cyborg tapped into the electromagnetic waves of the world. All you can hear are electromagnetic waves – deep humming from London underground electric motors.

4. Concentration

I’m a writer. First hour of the morning, no cochlear implant, half-asleep in pyjamas with the first coffee of the day. Not hearing helps me to dream and write in my inner imaginative world.
Which also means . . .

5. Meditative state

When you can choose not to hear, turning off can be meditative. It calms my mind and helps me to be mindful. To quietly notice the world around me.

6. Using other senses

There are no disability super-senses but losing one sense helps me to concentrate more on my other senses. I pay attention to sights and scents of the world around me. I read body language for clues to meaning.

Which leads to…

7. Sign language

The joy of British Sign Language or Sign Supported English. The ease of seeing the emotional meaning of what people say from their facial expressions and body language. The precision of BSL and how it discourages waffle.

8. Loop systems and Bluetooth

Loop systems and Bluetooth (when they work). Hearing people are spoilt but when I find a loop system in a cinema that works, I’m fully connected to the film. Horror films have a new level of terror when I hear the monster breathing and the foreboding music.

Which leads to . . .

9. Music

My recognition of music is limited. Most of the time it is just noise. I’ve been told it’s a bonus not to hear Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody thousands of times in the run up to Christmas. I’m deafened – I was hearing until I was fifteen – and I love music that I can make sense of. I spent an hour loitering in a Japanese clothes shop. Because they were playing The Doors first album.

10. Boring people

It takes effort and concentration –hearing and lipreading – for me to understand someone. It’s easier to not understand them. All I need to do, is drop my concentration.

As usual, I was lurking in the quieter kitchen at a party. Along with others who wanted a chance to talk. The most boring person in the room – convinced that he was the life and soul of the party – was spouting forth. Not noticing the glazed expressions of boredom around him.

“Tell Mickey what I’m saying,” he (it’s nearly always a ‘he’) told my friend.

“Sure” my mate said, turning to me and fingerspelling, b-o-l-l-o-c-k-s.

Mickey Fellowes is a director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion training organisation Sunsurfer Consultancy www.sunsurfer.co.uk