‘A different kind of hearing.’
At the age of 11 Evelyn Glennie was told that she would have to attend a special
school for the deaf. It was a moment that changed her life. She became determined
to go to the local secondary school attended by her brothers.
‘It didn’t make sense that simply because a chart says you can’t hear such and
such, you therefore can’t do certain things,’ she said in a recent interview. With her
parents’ support she ignored the audiologist and went to the mainstream school
anyway.
Now, despite being completely deaf since the age of 11, Evelyn is one of the world’s
top classical percussionists, feted all over the world, performing barefoot to help
her feel vibrations from the other instruments. When asked how she copes with her
hearing problem she replies that she doesn’t ‘see’ herself as deaf – just someone
with a different kind of hearing. Her other senses are enhanced and her concentra-
tion heightened: she simply ‘listens’ harder.
‘I never asked, “Why me?”’, she says. ‘We’ve all got something that needs sorting.
You meet people really handicapped who appear to be the happiest people in the
world. That puts life in perspective.’
22 SELF-ACCEPTANCE
You must learn to accept yourself before you can expect
others to accept you.
David Baird
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