Reply to comment

You post made me think of an article I read the other week about happiness and how it's important to us a society, etc. The article itself wasn't really that good, but it had an interesting comment from a psychologist who performed a study where she asked people various questions about happiness. She would ask participants if they would rather have no friends, or be deaf. And the majority of people would take a long time to think about this, and the psychologist's comment was that they shouldn't, because deaf people are still just as happy as everyone else, and friendless people aren't.

And I find that very interesting, that people would take a long time to decide if they'd rather be friendless or deaf. Because it shows that non-deaf people think that being deaf would greatly take away from their quality of life. And as much so as being friendless?!

But, obviously, being deaf doesn't take a lot away (at least in terms of happiness, which I think is a pretty important thing). Deaf people are just as happy as non-deaf people. So, I guess to relate this to your post a little bit more--what we perceive as a diminished quality of life really is quite different than that of another person's reality.