Darkness ascends.
Sounds are silent.
Eyes adjust no better.
Heart beats quick.
Brain scrambles in loss.
A deep breath.
Another breath.
Breathe deeply.
Reach out.
Spread self.
Hands.
Reach out.
Move hands.
Hands and Wall meet.
Feet knows Ground.
Move with faith.
Feel the darkness.
Own it.
What is choice when it is limited?
Many of us as parents make choices for our kids every day. We feed them oatmeal for breakfast instead of cookies because we know it is what will start their day in the best way. We choose to clothe them when we go to the grocery store because if not…well, we just do. We choose to send them to school every day because we know it is what they need to be educated and to provide an intellectual foundation for their future.
However, when a Deaf child is born parents do not have the choice to know the Deaf community by the medical staff at the hospital. Instead, we are cattle prodded to the audiologist and ENT surgeon who present us with options on the types of hearing aids we want to purchase. The medical staff does not provide us as parents the choice to speak to a Deaf person…
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2016 – it is and always going to be a way to dispose human beings, just because they happen to be different from the mainstream or the majority.
Records for more than two or three thousand years talk about how babies and children would be abandoned because they happen to be different – the most obvious are the physical differences and the least obvious would be the sensory differences; nonetheless, de nada baby be gone!
There will be cultures who cherished their people who were different; giving them status equivalent to an elder or medicine man/woman. Those cultures understood what it means to be spiritually connected; a lesser chance for the disposal of such quality of being.
It is unfortunate that after such a long history, we – the different, the despised, the minority – are still disposable. The video below describes the impact of homelessness and how we regard it as individuals and as a global society.
I have to be honest here – I was ready to disregard the video until ‘disposable human’ came into a conversation. It hit me. I am a disposable deaf human being according to the medical profession. I am a disposable bilingual human being according to White America (and so it happens, I am white). I am a disposable female human being despite outnumbering males and so on. I am entirely disposable.
A disposable human being that under all this – I bleed as red as anyone on this world just as the disposable homeless bleeds red on the street.
All of us have layers. You. Me. Yes.
The complicated layers, countless. The simple layers, countless. What about those layers in between? Still countless.
Neat types of layers? Nah. How we rip those layers off depends on how we perceive the sense of self. Journeys taken can build layers or take them off.
One could rip the layer off like one would rip a bandaid off – the quick the pain is the quicker it goes away. Peel the bandaid and suffer the pain – indefinitely or at least until the bandaid is off.
How we perceive our layers within self can be painful so you can either ignore or delve into yourself. We almost never do things halfway – most likely going to either extreme.
We can reframe our layers until the truth is hidden away or it becomes a glaring light, putting one to shame in this world we live in today – either way. We can move our layers around, whether it is intellectual, cultural, linguistically, racially or the like; throughout all that, do we take the time to really reflect on how we present ourselves or choose the layers to cover ourselves to people?
I wonder if most people use layers to place their own fears into shadows. I know I do. I struggle with the sense of my self’s layers, what do they mean? How do they reflect the multi-chapter aspect of my own personal book? Does it reflect how much one does not understand about something and their reaction to the concept?
I had a family friend’s daughter announce that the family would be focusing 110% on their child getting an cochlear implant. This was like early 2000’s. Now the idea of cochlear implants was not new nor the controversy with the idea of such; however, this was someone I knew most of my life and this straightforward news brought a shock to me and some friends of ours and our reaction was not too great. Afterwards, this person just disappeared. At the same time, I had to turn inward to reflect on the reason why I reacted this way, after all we shared a common bond, the deaf community.
After reading the story above, if you wonder if my response was towards technology, my initial response was regarding technology. This is where I had to peel a layer away, to ask myself if it was truly technology that I was reacting to, after all I wore hearing aids. It was a long retrospective reflection. Technology is a tool and rightfully so. Technology is manipulated by our own selves.
So then what? As a human, it was language, communication, social and community that me responding in a negative way. In a way, this person was telling me that the upbringing they went through their entire life was a farce or a negative aspect, a type of upbringing I had, despite having hearing parents myself. Technology was one layer, the rest came up when I reframed how I used technology as a deaf person.
Do we build our own layers or do we have others build those layers upon us? When I think of this, I think of a black person wanting to rip their blackness off themselves so they can pose as a white person because society deems it acceptable. The problem with society is that the concept of layers are multiple and will follow the whims of society, suppressing so many layers that truly make us human.
Ummm…
The sky is one way to dream – high and above; keeping to goals that are as real as the clouds, the brightness of the sun. The sky fascinates in so many ways – challenges the thinking in different avenues.
#dailyprompt Sky
the sun will rise
the moon will set
it is the way of the world.
its subtle differences
that makes a day
in our lives
nothing much kinder
nothing much harsher
than we live
life itself.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 26,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 10 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
The importance of a whole child, not just the auditory process.
In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: “ROY G. BIV.” The picture was actually filtered on a early morning’s sunrise, which is often unusual. Most rainbows tend to take place in the evening. When I took the picture, I only saw the brighter rainbow, then filtered it only to get a second surprise, the fainter rainbow. This was taken in LaPorte, IN on 20 October 2014.
Double Rainbow, pictured in LaPorte, IN
This hit me today. I have been fully aware of this quote as I go through life daily. Yet a conversation such as today brings this close to mind and heart. This is a question one needs to ask oneself periodically through out the journey of a lifetime.
So which is it? What is better? The truth that draws a tear or the lie that draws a smile?** Most of will agree that the truth hurts when confronted with it and with time and the chance to self-analyze the truth, acceptance and the chance to make changes, to improve, to understand and see things in a different light.
a tear
A greater pain is the lie that people just tell or let go. You wonder ‘let go’? How is letting go a lie? It does not promote dialogue nor a pathway for change. A lie is not a simple thing, it creates conflict and dishonesty, hurting all that ‘benefit’ from this lie. A lie does not offer opportunities nor does it offer chances. It takes them away. That hurts more deeply than the truth.
I have said my piece, yet I want to bring something up. Responsibility. Many people think that it is the sole person’s responsibility for everything in life or in what they do. Unfortunately, this is not true.
I had this conversation once with my mother at a soccer game. We were talking about stuff and she asked me why I did not use sign language at home. I explained that it became a habit to sign at school and speak at home. She put the responsibility of signing at home at my hands, 100%. I told her that it was also her responsibility and whomever in the house to tell me to shut up and start signing (I literally said ‘shut up’ because by nature I am a chatterbox, when the time comes). It is the both of us who are responsible for what we do, no matter how heartfelt our intentions are, equally.
Each of us may have a different type of responsibility and at different levels one time or another. No person is solely responsible for the outcome, consequences or actions that occurs. That responsibility is equal among others. This denial and placing the responsibility upon one person is a form of a lie. When we do not stand up, then the lie continues.
Which is it? A tear or a lie?
a smile…
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