So the prevailing question on many minds is most likely “What the HELL do birds and hearing loss have to do with eachother?”
Well, to answer that we’ll have to go back into the annals of history to a time when a small child watched his single mother struggle with not only a severe mental health disorder but also a terrible back condition. Her back would keep her from sleeping properly for literally days on end, while the pressures of motherhood never took a break. In times of the greatest stress she would pack up the car in the early mornings and load my sleeping form into the back for a trip to the local logging roads for a session of bird watching.
To be totally truthful, she wasn’t the best parent a kid could have. What parent would be under the circumstances? But she did her best and ultimately she gave me one of the best coping strategies and life lessons I could have ever learned.
When life goes to the birds, go watch some birds.
Birdwatching and bird photography have had a place in my life ever since those early years and it has remained one of my go to stress relievers up to this day. There is a simplistic yet pervasive joy in watching these little critters hopping about, finding food, nesting, even stopping to chat with the photographer perched quietly in the bushes.
One of my greatest joys in my journey through hearing loss is realizing that bird watching is one of the few things in my life that will not change. You see, birds don’t care of you can hear them. They dont judge you on whether you are fully sighted, how much money you have or what political viewpoint you come from. They see neither race nor sexual orientation or any of the other myriad things we humans divide our world up by. As long as you are kind and gentle to them they will happily allow you to share their world for as long as you choose to do so. Watching and interacting with them forces me to let go of the pressures and turmoil I might be feeling, to ease off the gas pedal and slow myself down to their level. When I finally walk away from my feathered friends I am as calm and centered as they are, ready to once again take on this journey called life and its many stresses. So what do bird watching and hearing loss have to do with eachother?
I couldn’t get through the one without having the other.
Happy Birthday Mom, and thank you for the best gift I have ever received
The Celebration Of Silence 