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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, I don’t know that time has ever gone by so quickly as it did at the Tommy Emmanuel concert on Saturday, and I believe if you are learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I talk about the sensibility of being grateful for what we hear.
Today’s fun fact: Since I’ll be talking about hearing today, it seems only appropriate to share some fun facts about the topic.
- Your sense of hearing is dependent upon tiny hairs deep inside your ear. If you lose these hairs, you lose your hearing.
- Sound travels at the speed of 1,130 feet per second, or 770 miles per hour.
- The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear.
- When you go up to a high elevation, your ears pop. This is because your Eustachian tubes are equalizing the pressure between the outside air and that inside your ear.
What I learned yesterday.
You may recall that I mentioned on Friday that I would be attending a Tommy Emmanuel concert over the weekend. It was truly amazing. It was even more enjoyable that I imagined it would be and it was like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. I’ve watched Tommy play the guitar on dozens of YouTube videos, but those don’t compare to sitting 10 feet from his fingers and watching them fly up and down the fretboard.
I was sitting in the presence of a true master of his craft and it was mind blowing. In a way, I found it to be like some of my first professional sporting events. The first time I attended a NASCAR race, I was mesmerized by how fast the cars were going, even though I’d watched them on TV and knew what speeds they were capable of. The first time I attended an NBA game I was shocked by how quickly they moved and how gracefully they traveled up and down the court.
As I traveled home from the Tommy Emmanuel concert I tried to think of ways I could talk about it today. I replayed the concert in my mind and thought about the skill he demonstrated, the charm he used on the audience, and the joy expressed in his body language.
However, I had to keep in mind that I’ve committed to talk about gratitude this month so today’s episode needed to come from that angle. Sure, I could say that I’m grateful I got to see one of my heroes, but that seemed like a cop out.
Instead, I want to talk about hearing. Now, that may seem like an odd choice, but I think it will make sense in a few minutes.
I started down this path by thinking about how appreciative I am for the ability to enjoy music. Music is wonderful. It stirs up emotion, it calms anxiety, it brings clarity of thought, it teaches, it inspires, it brings people together, and it motivates.
I thought about the styles of music I enjoy listening to from pop, to jazz, hard rock, to instrumental. I thought about my days of singing a cappella music, to playing music for my church each week. I love music.
So at that point I thought I’d talk about my gratitude for music. However, the more I thought about it, I realized that my appreciation goes beyond just being able to enjoy music. After all, if I didn’t have a sense of hearing, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy music. That was the thought that unlocked a new level of appreciation for me.
I then took a few minutes to think about how dependent I am on my ability to hear. I mean, my ability to provide for my family rests on my ability to hear. I have to be able to hear in order to be able to edit audio. Not only do I need to be able to hear, but to be able to edit at a high detail level, I need to be able to hear and understand nuances and subtle irregularities in audio. I need to be able to hear the differences that my decisions are making so that my clients are getting the best possible results.
From there I started thinking about other areas of my life that are enriched because of my sense of hearing. I can hear the laughter of my children when I tickle them. I can hear my wife’s voice when she tells me that she loves me. I can hear the tornado sirens each spring that warn me when I need to seek shelter.
Do me a favor. Pause the episode, take your headphones out of your ears, and spend the next minute listening. Try to take in all the sounds happening around you. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Welcome back. What did you hear? The first thing I heard was my Dharma Initiative clock ticking on the wall beside me. As I continued to listen, I heard the sounds of the OKC Thunder game coming from the living room. That’s all I heard. I continued to sit in silence for a few more seconds and then I noticed something else. It was the fan from my backup hard drive that’s sitting next to me on my desk. A few seconds after that I heard the sound of my kids talking as they got ready for bed.
Did you have a similar experience? That is, did you think you had heard all there was to hear only to realize that there will still things out there that you were missing?
Interesting exercise, isn’t it?
As I continued to think about how I would discuss this topic today, I thought about what it would be like to have hearing loss. My grandma suffers from severe hearing loss. Even with her hearing aids in, we have to shout in order to communicate with her. It’s embarrassing for her, and it ends in a frustrating experience for all of us when we try to have a conversation. I may experience hearing loss one day too. That’s all the more reason I should express gratitude for it today.
So what did I learn?
Frankly, I learned a lot.
First, I don’t know about you, but when I first considered (or mentioned) the topic of hearing, it seemed like a boring idea. However, I didn’t allow that to stop me from pursuing the idea and thinking about it to a logical end. By allowing myself the freedom to think about the topic, I realized a much deeper and sincere appreciation for this “boring” topic. There’s certainly a lesson there.
Second, I learned the importance of thinking about things from a different angle. If I didn’t force myself to consider how I could take my concert experience and work it into this month of gratitude, I would have never arrived at this topic. There a a wide variety of perspectives to look at things, and it can be very rewarding and eye opening to challenge ourselves to look at things from a perspective that seems unnatural or non-instinctive.
Third, I learned that we tune a lot of stuff out. Our brain is wired to drown out signals that aren’t necessary to our primary task. This helps us focus, learn, and even sleep. However, we have a tendency to do this too much. We focus on our phones and ignore the things happening around us. I made it a point to experience the Tommy Emmanuel concert through my own eyes and not the lens of my camera. I took only one short video and half a dozen pictures. I’m glad I made that decision. I know I would benefit by doing that more often.
Lastly, I learned that we take things for granted. It’s just natural. I can’t tell you the last time I showed any appreciation for my hearing. There are countless other things out there that I also take for granted. Are you guilty of that too? Of course. We all are. What are those things? What if you took a few minutes to write some of those down and spend some time thinking about how life would be if you didn’t have those things. If those things are people in your life, let them know how much they mean to you. After all, just like our hearing, one day those things we take for granted may be gone.
I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
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