Today, I’m going to tell you about a lady I’ll call Pam. Pam is a friend of my mother’s, and very accomplished in her job. But that is a very small part of who she is. Pam is first and foremost a mother. She has three children, and they are the light of her life. If you were to see her talk about them, you wouldn’t be able to debate this fact. If there is a school or sporting event that conflicts with her regular work schedule, she will work another time. Pam is a devoted wife and mother. She’s also deaf, or rather, she used to be. At the age of six, Pam was stricken with meningitis. She lost the hearing in one ear completely, and her right ear began to steadily lose hearing. More than thirty years later, she had less than three percent hearing in her right ear. Pam reads lips and, partly because of her late, or postlinguistic, loss of hearing, can speak quite intelligibly. She communicates beautifully, and is easy to talk to. She’s able to email and fax most anyone not in the room with, and so leads a very typical life. About six weeks ago, Pam informed us that she wouldn’t be around for a while. She was going to have a cochlear implant. Today was her first day back to work, and it was interesting to hear what she was experiencing. She is in awe of the everyday sounds that we take for granted. She said she did not realize how loud a toilet flush is, or what music sounded like. She is able to hear her fax machine beep when she receives a fax, and believes that she will one day be able to use the phone again, something that she has been unable to do since she was a teenager. The one noise she told me she loved was her children’s laughter. For Pam, the pain and expense has been worth it. Just like anything else, though, there is a negative aspect. Along with the joys of laughter and birds singing, she is also inundated with the everyday background noise of life. Traffic is a bad noise for her, as is a restaurant full of people during the dinner rush. These times, she is literally in sensory overload. Of course, she will eventually get used to these everyday noises, much as we have grown accustomed over the years, but (here it comes… you all know me pretty well… say it with me…) it really got me thinking. We are so accustomed to our lives and the way we experience it, that we accept our familiarity as the norm. That is quite appropriate because, for you, that IS your reality. But sometimes, if you look at a situation in a fresh new way, you will see that there are many possible truths for that given situation. Pam is experiencing a different reality, and her life is becoming richer because of it. My goal this week is to look at my patterns of perception and see how I can change and improve my life for the better. It’s spring, so I guess I need to shift my paradigms around and see what I come up with. After all, we may be able to hear, but how well do we listen?