Would You Trade Passion To Be Able to Hear Again?

For over twenty years, I abandoned my passion for barefoot water skiing until my husband sent me a link to a TODAY show segment featuring a 66-year-old woman barefooting: Barefoot Skier is Landing on her Feet at 66.  At the age of 44, I picked up that passion once again and began competing. 

So when a new friend threw me a question, he received a response he didn't bargain for.  My friend wrote:

“I don’t know what it’s like to be deaf, but I do know what it’s like when something is important to a person,” a new friend wrote. “I have a question for you, if God or man came up with a solution to restore your hearing, and in exchange you had to give up barefooting, which would you take? I’d bet the farm that you’d take the deal.”

And to this new friend’s surprise, I’d take the barefooting over restored hearing.

You see, I’ve been deaf so many years now it is just a part of me. In fact, becoming deaf turned out to be a blessing. I’ve long moved past the stage of grief and into living.  I still go through periods of time when I get down about the communication difficulties and wish for hearing. I had a lot of moments like that yesterday when I struggled to understand the conversations flowing around me at the Nationals barefoot tournament.  But to give up a passion? No can do.

Now if I could have both, that’d be a different story…

How about you? If you had to choose between your hearing or your passion in life, (the one thing you really love to do, the thing that lights your soul on fire), which would you choose?