It's No Longer the Blind Leading the Blind

Wow, enlightenment! I just had a brilliant moment coming home on the train. I had a conversation with a guy called Terence about an umbrella, where he worked and all sorts of stuff.
I was sitting at the train station and there was a big black umbrella on the seat next to me when the train coming the other way came up to the platform. On old guy, around 60, came off the train, saw the umbrella and acted out in a very animated way "That's my umbrella. Thank you!"
From that point, I realised that he was deaf, because I have a few deaf friends. We had a simple, conversation about how much his umbrella cost ($50) and how I should "keep it quiet, so my wife won't hear" (she's deaf too)!
Once I couldn't under the more complex parts of the conversation he pulled out his phone and we talked via text and I found that he teaches Auslan, an Australian sign language at a TAFE not too far from my house and all sorts of stuff and he's a nice guy as well! I told him about my friend who lives up in Cairns, who wants to come down and be an Auslan interperetor for primary schools and the like, and how I wanted to learn Auslan and he gave me a card for a short course to learn Auslan.

The point is not just that I had a conversation with such a nice guy. The point is that a lot of the stuff I've been learning at uni has started to make sense!
Especially sociology. They said something along the lines of "society and culture are viewed through the lens of language". That's entirely true and there are a few examples of it, like eskimo's having around 20 words for snow and me only being able to think of about 4 that I've ever heard, and some languages have multiple words for different colours or the word love and others still have "his" and "hers" words for objects without a gender (like computers).
But it's more interesting still to figure out how not being able to hear a language effects your concept of a language and how you communicate with those who can hear it. I mean, Terence was exceptional at conveying the meaning of what he wanted to get across and I could communicate with him. It's bloody brilliant!

I wonder what it'd be like to live without something that everyone takes for granted. Have anyone really experienced something like that? I mean, sure, when I broke a bone in my hand, it sucked because I couldn't use my right hand, but what if it was my sight? Or what if my hand had to be amputated (I know it's a little extreme for a busted bone, but I'm sure it's happened somewhere)?
But something like that could happen in the most obscure of situations. When my dad was half my age he was at scouts and one of the kids there was blinded by a potato! A bloody potato!

So, my pseudo-philosophic comment for tonight: Maybe we should all stop complaining about what's going wrong with our lives and actually appreciate what we have and what we have the ability to experience. Just maybe. But I doubt it. It's just too easy to complain about trivial and pointless crap.
Get real, kids, because someone else has always got it worse than you.