Ears

I recall an Billy Connolly joke that goes something like this. You know you’re getting old when, as you bend down to tie your shoe laces you look around to see if there’s anything else you can do while you’re down there. I am now past my allotted three score years and ten and the signs of age are both externally visible and internally experienced. I grunt when I sit down, I think for a few seconds before I get up. I have bought an automatic car for the first time in my life and have had to get night glasses to avoid being dazzled by headlight glare. Over the past decade my ears have also succumbed and I now wear hearing aids for my moderate hearing loss. Aids however are not perfect and I still mishear things – often to the delight of my nearest and dearest. My most recent gaff was when I was leaving my grandaughter off to school, where she met a friend who she introduced as Jane. Jane’s mum came over at which point my granddaughter said in a loud voice “Go away”. I was mortified. I attempted to redirect the comments by saying “I can’t go away yet until you are inside.
I hoped it worked. The little one looked at me oddly and then slowly restated what she had said . It was Galway – not go away. Jane’s family name. The two names are always said together as there is a second Jane – Jane Smith – in her class and so a distinction needs to be made lest you confuse your Janes.
Now even my old ear is an extremely complex organ. It keeps my glasses on and stops my sun hat from falling over my eyes. In addition to allowing me to hear, albeit with a mechanical aid, it has a key role in assisting my balance and orientation. Inside it, there are 23,000 hairs and fluid in order to deaden the sound of my own pulse. It is a high tech piece of equipment and can detect sound through gas, solid and liquid.
Given this complexity why do we often only use it to  hear what we want to hear? In my case the mishearing wasn’t wilful, it was accidental.
In arguments, in the heat of the moment we turn on selective hearing mode - only hearing what we see as critical to us or challenging to our integrity or best efforts
In this place I call home, our background often conditions us  to  only hear what we want to hear, what we are conditioned to hear or what we expect to hear from “Them-uns”. 
Maybe it’s time for us to have a cultural hearing check to see if we need some assistance to hear them-uns better? It might just help us have better conversations which allow us to grow together.