Today I have been contemplating how hearing is a unique sense amid all our others. It is often underplayed in our visually oriented world. However, hearing is the sense we develop and use first, in the womb, around 18 weeks gestation. Like sight, it allows us to receive information in advance before it is immediately necessary (like in the case of a bear crashing through the woods), but unlike sight, it does nor require light, or a particular orientation of our bodies or heads, to receive the message. The way we experience the soundmaker is actually by experiencing the movement of the soundmaker itself, as our ears’ hair cells vibrate sympathetically with that movement’s pressure wave through the air; our eyes only detect the light waves that reflect off the object, rather than the object itself. And the sonic information is immediate, from an action happening now, where sight provides an overload of information of everything reflecting light, whether it is moving or acting, or even relevant. We are affected by sound all the time, even while sleeping, as we have no natural ear-lids. Hear hear for hearing!
