The gift to know up from down, left
from right, front from back, is incalculably value. Deaf people struggle with this because a
great deal of this information is derived from the inner ear. This knowledge is, at every conscious moment,
being recalibrated and fed to our brain which in turn feeds it to our bodies
which makes thousands of continuous calibration to keep us stable on planet
earth. But this miracle would be
meaningless without an equal miracle; we are able to relationally know the same
up/down truth about every object we encounter.
To fully understand the gift you have you need only to stand in a completely
dark room and experience complete equilibrium while a deaf person in the same
room would just as likely fall down as stand up. A deaf person uses visual cues to establish
their balance.
(For more on this and other subjects
attend my slide lecture and show opening, Tuesday, February 17, 4:30 p.m. in
A72 at Union University)
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