Ear-ily Familiar

Last week I took some long-neglected hearing tests. My children had complained that I couldn’t hear them. Fod had gotten so frustrated she told to me that she didn’t like talking to me on the phone anymore—which is one of the main ways we communicate since she lives in another state. Fyd got tired of having to repeat herself. Finally, last fall as the classroom became nightmarish when too many students spoke at once, I asked for a hearing exam.

What could be the cause? I wondered. I didn’t use ear buds or headphones. (Someone had told me when I lived in Japan in the age of the original Walkman I was not the kind of person who should use it out and about. I would get too lost in the music to function safely.) I didn’t go to loud concerts in my youth (my older brother practicing with his band in the basement excepted). I had suffered through a couple of sinus infections throughout the cold months that seemed to go straight to my ears, but still.

The audiologist remarked that I had tiny ear canals so she used pediatric ear buds for my tests. (When she took them out after the final test, I wanted to take a fork to them, my ears itched so badly.) That explained the impactions I had endured as a child.

"Your hearing is excellent. It’s like a 10-year-old's," she announced. “Then why can’t I hear?” I practically sputtered. “It could be that you have a lot going on or you’re easily distracted. If you’re not getting enough sleep or under a lot of stress your hearing may suffer,” she replied.

That explains it. I've said I haven’t seen my bedtime for the past four years. Due to my chaplaincy duties I am often up past 10 p.m. which is my optimal bedtime. Even when I don’t have those duties, I have gotten into a bad habit of going to bed late. And when I do get to sleep, I am easily awakened—no doubt also due to my excellent hearing. Who knew? Add that to my peripatetic life—teaching here, on-call there, meeting somewhere else, maintaining up to 6 email accounts. Yes, I had a lot to be distracted by, and, especially last fall, I was carrying a load of poorly managed stress.

I started thinking about what I teach students in my Communication classes: Hearing is involuntary and physiological; listening is voluntary and psychological. Listening takes more energy than hearing. So I was hearing people—that’s why I was so easily awakened—but because of my reduced energy from lack of sleep and rushing about the city, maybe at times I wasn’t able to fully listen.

And what was the first word of the Rule of St. Benedict again? Not hear, but “Listen.”

As usual when I have self-diagnosed an ill, I had looked up the treatment. Over and over the advice to people who are hard of hearing (or who think they are) was: pay attention.

The latest iteration of my personal rule includes something about rest and, more specifically, sleep. Sister Joan in her commentary on the Rule seems to be writing just for me, “Pay attention to the instructions in [your] rule and attend to the important things in life.” (The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages, Sister Joan Chittister, OSB, p. 19)