This isn't so hard to understand. Life is short, and we have many talents-- even the people who think they have no talents do-- but we cannot develop them all or succeed to the highest level in any of our talents even if we do. Michael Jordan retired from basketball and tried MLB baseball. He wasn't good at it, then returned to basketball for a year or so before retiring again. Magic Johnson retired due to AIDS back around 1990. He is still alive, still working on his Magic Johnson foundation for AIDS. He's using what he has (celebrity, connections) to raise money for what he probably never wanted to have his life center on-- AIDS.
We can think of other successful celebrities: Michael J. Fox, etc, who have had their lives changed by disability. Do they say "I hate myself?" Instead, they use what they can do to change public attitude and raise awareness for research-- and those two conditions (Parkinson and AIDS) do end lives prematurely, with suffering.
But there are celebrities with hearing loss, or deafness. They don't beg for money to cure deafness. They ask for people to recognize deaf people are capable, too, or they hide their deafness in order to get work and avoid labelling.
"Even though I am nearly deaf, I seem to be gifted with a kind of inner hearing which enables me to detect sounds and noises that the listeners do not perceive. "
-Thomas Alva Edison, possibly referring to having synesthetic hearing.
Thomas Edison, with limited schooling and deafness, worked as a telegraph operator, brought electricity, light bulbs, the first phonographs, and other inventions to the world? He was a businessman, self-booster, and inventor. He has said that deafness allowed him to concentrate, and he also said work is the secret to success.
"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. Accordingly, a 'genius' is often merely a talented person who has done all of his or her homework."
Deafness does not impede a person from working hard; in fact, they may work far harder than others and not realize it because they're not as distracted. Back to actors who are our current ages' celebrities, rather than scientists and inventors:
Marlee Matlin is deaf/HoH, but how many know Rob Lowe is deaf in his right ear? Almost nobody, because it doesn't matter to his acting skill. It matters in his personal interactions in that he can't hear on his right side. How many know Charlie Chaplin learned sign language and studied with deaf actors? How many know Buster Keaton (another silent movie star) went deaf?
We know Beethoven went deaf and continued to compose music. That sticks in our minds because it seems a paradox. How many know John Keats probably was deaf before he died, either from syphilis or mercury poisoning used to treat it? His behavior of reclusion, reluctance to meet with strangers, etc. all fit the model of sudden, late deafness. How many know Jonathan Swift was deaf? I knew it the minute I read the first page of his "Gulliver's travels" but that information was not available in his bio.
We have had many writers in feminism and abolition who were themselves partly deaf, including a nun. We have had scientists, and college presidents who were deaf. The founder of the Girl Scouts was deaf.
So, deafness and success are not antonyms. Deaf pride comes from knowing deep in our bones that what others see and patronize as our greatest handicap can be our strength as we work towards transforming the world, however small our efforts may be.
I was just told by somebody online, in rejecting the "broken body" model for Deaf Pride is "treating hearing people as judgmental" and that she gets the impression that deaf people who don't want to be hearing are delusional and "act like" they are the next step in evolution.
Honestly, that's a very strange opinion to take of somebody who says "I'm fine being deaf, thank you very much, and no, I prefer not to explain in detail why," isn't it?
But maybe not so strange. Our society is commerical and continually sends us negative messages. If you're fat, you should be thin. If you're ugly, you should get plastic surgery. Self-improvement so other people see us as normal or desireable. But that's all superficial. We all get ugly, shriveled or something as life goes along anyway. Our society actually doesn't encourage wisdom, self-understanding, empathy, or self-acceptance.
It's great to tune all that shallow nonsense out. It is. Why should I be eager to join a culture that says I'm broken, inferior, and should always feel that way about myself? Why should I join a culture that doesn't value diversity, unless it's pretty?
No, loving deaf culture is not about finding joy in "being broken." It's seeing ourselves as whole people, with strengths and weaknesses unrelated to our disability, and who can succeed by becoming happy in the Greek sense of happiness--"eudaimona" which means well-being. The state of unifying our self, our talents, and our will in work. Work-- not in a day job, but in achieving our full potential.
"If we all did the things we are really capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves."
-Thomas Alva Edison-
Life transforms potential energy into kinetic energy, and we all have our trajectories in life. I think if we were all busy achieving our potential, even when that's more limited than we'd like, we would understand the Deaf Way much better.
Deaf people are and have been artists of all types, performers, astronomers, educators, scientists, engineers, lawyers, doctors, businessmen, programmers, inventors, deejays, musicans, writers, poets; even the plain people who work in factories, shipping, post offices, administration. They're math whizzes. They're handy carpenters, car fix-it guys, They are athletes, social workers, the go-to guys for their friends. The ones who think to show up to help somebody who's hurt when everybody else is busy in denial. They're old and afraid. They're young and reckless.They're married, single, gay, straight, all races. They've been born into the best and the worst of families. They're wonderful, terrible, creative, dull. They all are alive and human, full of emotions and hopes.
The Deaf Way to Success (tm) is not about wishing you had better cards in life. It's about playing your cards expertly, the patience to learn from others, knowing that you've "filled the unforgiving minute/ With sixty seconds' worth of distance run." This line, to me, isn't about running further than anybody else, just as far as _you_can in that time. It's about investing yourself in the here and now, not filling your time with others' opinions and regrets.
I'd like to append the full poem "If" by Rudyard Kipling right now. Read and think. Is he really talking about those who are perfectly normal?
If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
This is an impossible standard in many ways. But it is worth striving for. It's not exclusive to being deaf, of course. I was reading the other week about an author who researched how people respond to disasters. She pointed out "the Disaster You" may be somebody you don't know; that people often do better than they think they will, reacting calmly and decisively, or they collapse into cowardice when they think they won't.
Kipling is saying you need to know yourself in disaster and pick yourself up after to carry on, without hate or deceit. No regrets. No anger. No dwelling on unfairness. Just keep going on and know yourself at all times. That's how he became a successful writer and Nobel Laureate, instead of a self-pitying drunkard on skid row.
Kipling was tone-deaf, he said his ears wavered. He only knew beat and rhythm, and that's what got into his poetry. He did not have a terrific childhood, at one point being abused by his aunt for five years. He gives us a glimpse of that in his heartbreaking short story, titled "Baa-Baa Black Sheep."
In real life, when his mother returned and bent to kiss him after five years apart, he thought she was going to hit him. That's how much Rudyard had forgotten what normal family was like. Fortunately his parents were appalled and did much to try and undo the damage. While Kipling is limited by his time (and often cited as a racist)--I read him for what transcends politics: humanity and imagination. And his children's literature is excellent: the Jungle Books, the Just So Stories.
In Kipling's story, "They," there is a fine line about emotional abuse of children being as easy as a laugh, that I've remembered for nearly 30 years straight.
“A man who laughs at a child—unless the child is laughing too—is a heathen!”
That's why I read him.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson was legally blind and tone deaf. He struggled with lifelong depression (and for the first half of his life, he feared he had inherited epilepsy from his father, but found he only had gout and flashes of light due to his progressive blindness.) Despite this and a chaotic family life, he was the premier poet of his age, eventually having to compose lengthy passages of poetry in his head, because he couldn't read his own handwriting anymore. He wouldn't quit poetry because he couldn't proofread anymore. His life also shaped what he wrote.
Attitude is something you alone can decide to have. Nobody can take your attitude away; they can only trash you for having it. If you have something to contribute to the world, do it. The way will be hard, different, and unexpected, with the occasional failure, but it will be better than regret.