i have a complicated relationship to my sense of sight. i’ve worn glasses since i was 3, and i’ve had glaucoma with worsening vision since i was 17. i remember holding my breath around my childhood friend Ernesto’s dad, who was blind, in awe of the way that he carried himself, thinking i was peering into my future. being able to see contributes so much to my life. my friends know me for loving color and for looking closely at flowers, art, and my loved ones.
and yet, i’ve spent countless hours closing my eyes and trying hard to hear more, hoping that those vibrations coursing into my ears will be enough for me when the time comes. i want to not only exist but thrive in a world which has so much beauty that i have yet to appreciate. i do not believe that a world without sight will hold the same beauty as a world with it — but i do believe that each sense is controlled with a knob of effort that you can keep turning infinitely, and it’s always worth turning a little more.
i recently got Isha a watch that is engraved with instructions to hold it up to her ear to listen to the ticking of my heartbeat, even when we’re apart. i cherish phone calls with my family, even when there’s nothing to talk about, just to hear their voices. i love hearing my friends do impressions because it enumerates all the things that they’ve been able to Notice, about each other, about strangers, about animals.
last month, i went on a hike with three friends. each of them had a very big camera, and i did not. but we all love birding, and use the Merlin Bird ID app to identify birds. now, if you’re not familiar, you can add birds to your life list by describing it, or by recording audio of its songs and calls, or by submitting a picture of it. i’ll add birds using all three mechanisms, but on the hike, i found out that Spencer only logs birds that he’s taken a picture of.
is hearing the bird not enough to know that it was there? to know that for a brief period of time you shared the same space, and breathed the same air, and possibly stepped on the same leaves. isn’t sight just as unreliable at making sense of the world? from far away, or covered by the foliage of trees, or fighting the glare of the sun.
Our species and our culture are so driven by sight that even people who are blind from birth will describe the world using visual words and metaphors.* You agree with people if you see their point, or share their view. You are oblivious to things in your blind spots. Hopeful futures are bright and gleaming; dystopias are dark and shadowy. — Ed Yong, in An Immense World
i will admit that if you look at the names of the birds on my life list, many of them are described visually: the “Orange”-crowned Warbler or the “Spotted” Dove or the “Blue” Rock-Thrush. but birds are so much more than what they look like.
i’m not trying to say that they can be reduced to just their vocalizations either, but that i know a great many things to be real that i have never seen.
on that hike, i heard many birds, so loud, and yet i saw perhaps less than a percent of them. i heard the gushing of water from a big source that i never saw but knew must be there. i saw mushrooms around logs and knew that, despite not seeing the threads themselves, they must be silently sending signals to each other underground. i heard two cyclists talking from across the ravine, and despite not being able to make out the words or see their faces, i knew that there exists between them a friendship, perhaps it’s new, or maybe it’s existed since their childhood.
i heard thuds as i stepped over a strong wooden bridge, and despite never meeting them, i knew that there were a couple of folks, or maybe just one who cared a lot, who walked this exact path and decided that there needed to be an easier way to get across this creek, and it is because of them that i am able to move deeper into the forest and hear more birds.
hearing is not currently my favorite sense, but i’ve decided that on every hike from now on, i’ll spend more time with my eyes closed. and if you join me, it could be.
Bloomberg was so unlucky to lose you