Literary Inspirations: Victor Hugo on Deafness

“What matters deafness of the ears when the mind hears? The one true deafness, the incurable deafness, is that of the mind”

-Victor Hugo

A bit tongue in cheek this week, I've been half deaf this week due to having a nasty ear infection that only infants are meant to get. No wonder they scream and yell when they get it, it really hurts and they have no way of communicating that. Despite only hearing things out to the right to me and feeling off kilter, life has been getting steadily better since the Sunday/Monday hooha when I had to work an extra shift on Sunday and woke up on Monday feeling like I had elephantitis of the left side of my head. Emails and texts have totally helped as well... it's nice to have someone who will mock you in a very caring way :D

I did like this quote though - there's nothing worse with someone who has a closed mind. I'm not so narcissistic as to believe everyone should share my point of view. We write in a blogosphere where one person may have a completely different take or opinion on something - we're multi-national, multi-cultural, multi-spiritual. We support different political movements, we're pessimists, optimists, realists. Sometimes I'll read something on a blog that I really don't agree with - it's not valid in my personal life experience. That doesn't give me the right to dismiss it out of hand as a valid way for that person to live their life and it doesn't give me the right to dismiss all their writing based on one comment... by becoming deaf to them I could find that I miss some gems of advice that could change my life.