In life there’s often places that give you a feeling of deja vu, you keep coming back to them and they have a special importance to you. I would like to talk a little about one place that have, more than anything else, had a profound effect on my life. In fact, everything I do and half the people I know seems to have some connection to it. For instance both my current better half, and also my former, were students at this place. This is kind of ironic, because I remember that when I graduated I did to a certain extent want to distance myself from it, to move on with my life. It wasn’t about dislike or anything like that, but I was ambitious and had very clear ideas of what I wanted to be and do and that was sooo much more than just this. Ah, youthful ignorance and arrogance! Ironically, in retrospect I think the conclusion would have to be that every single one of these grand plans ended up face first on the ground so hard it made the asphalt sing ;) Life!

The place I’m talking about is my old upper secondary/high school, Briskeby, where I spent three great years back in my late teens. It is a school for the hard of hearing and also an educational centre that do courses and otherwise try help hard of hearing people with many different conditions to a better life through mastering, understanding and coping with their condition. It’s owned by the norwegian association for the hard of hearing (HLF), yet financed by the government. The school is unique in Scandinavia because it focuses on the auditory, or “oral method”. That is, the very core philosophy of their educational method is that spoken language and not sign language, if possible, must be the primary means of communication.

Before I get decapitated by a horde of angry deaf, there’s nothing wrong with sign language at all, in fact it’s a fantastic aid and tool, but it is indeed kind of hard to function in the world of the hearing if you don’t speak their lingo. Besides, it’s kind of a shame to lay waste to whatever hearing people have, even if they have a quite substantial hearing loss. The wast majority of hard of hearing people are in fact just that and not deaf as the public seem to believe. Hearing need to be used too, in order to keep those parts of the brain active and functional, if a child (with a hearing loss, not deaf) grow up in an all-deaf no-sound community, it do not develop the ability to hear and speak orally and this cannot be fully mended later, exposure to sound and speech has to happen at the right and corresponding stages of the development of the brain.

Also, it is difficult for a deaf person to learn to write properly and within the regulations. Sign language is very much just that, a unique language with its own grammar, expressions and nuances, it is not just a rough adaption of spoken or written language. When a person with normal hearing learns to write, he has a lot of support from the spoken language he already know, obviously some fine-tuning is required and grammatical rules need to be learned, but even a heavy regional accent and variety of spoken Norwegian is a lot closer to written Norwegian than Norwegian sign language. Clearly, as we live in a world where most people work in offices, being able to write is kind of important. Not saying deaf can’t write, pretty much all can, and some very well, but their learning process is much more demanding and their written language is on average less adequate than that of the hearing person.

At this point I need to clarify the term “hard of hearing”. You see, it is sort of an umbrella as it include both people with a hearing loss, but also people with other conditions related to hearing such as Tinnitus or Ménière’s disease. Hard of hearing people are in fact a much more diverse group than most “normals” know. It’s also a very large group, actually, in western industrialized countries it is often suggested that 10 to 15 percent of the population somehow fit within the “hard of hearing” term. In other words, the hard of hearing are not just some weirdos in the corner flapping around with their arms speaking with their hands, they are a huge and substantial part of the society with needs that have to be addressed. That’s basically what my old school and centre of competence is all about. Giving hard of hearing people of all ages some of the tools they need to live, function and flourish in a world of sound.

Now, It’s been ten years since I went to Briskeby as a student, I’ve worked and studied, I’ve had my ups and downs, gone through a few relationships and hit the wall too, both figuratively and literally (hey, I’m almost blind, walls do get in the way from time to time!). Basically, I’ve been living, breathing and experiencing. Yet, now I’m back there, as an employee! Ten years is a while, but there’s still a lot of people I knew around, both teachers and other employees. Various specialists, for instance on hearing/sound constitutes part of the staff, but being a school there’s understandably a lot of educationalists of all kinds around.

Man, it’s weird! How do you deal with technically speaking being a colleague of someone that was your teacher back in the days? They were authority figures that through their skill and knowledge taught you difficult subjects and had considerable impact on the forming of your personality and academical foundation. Now, I bet it’s a new experience for them too, I don’t think they expected to have me back (dang, didn’t we FINALLY get rid of that bloke like ten years ago??) That said and a somewhat awkward or formerly-not-experienced social situation aside, more than anything else working at Briskeby is like coming home. Walking through that so familiar door is like entering another world, a different world. A world where being hard of hearing, being handicapped, is normal, where mostly everything happens on “our” terms. I guess it’s a feeling that can only be understood if you’ve truly seen society from the sideline, if you’ve felt how it is to be prevented from participating in the community because you’re different.

The tale of how I ended up back at Briskeby is one of many twists and turns, but it started with volunteer work back in the early fall of ’09. Ever since I landed on disabilities I’ve been doing various kinds of volunteer work, I was a janitor at a children’s home, I made food for the homeless and so forth. It’s been a conscious choice as I knew I would benefit from keeping myself active and keeping my brain ticking. The combination of volunteer work and disabilities allowed me to work within my functional ability and still at least keeping a (tiny) toe inside work life. To make a long story short, I was put back in touch with the good folks at Briskeby, I had an interview and they graciously took me in as a volunteer worker. Since then I’ve mostly been working with various IT-related stuff such as web-development/design, for instance their student blog. It’s not really my absolute favorite cup of tea, making web-pages, but I know a little about that process, it’s okay work and more important, I’ve got competence they currently lack. In other words, a win-win for both sides of the equation.

Obviously I must have been doing at least something right, because my boss started hinting of the possibility of ahem…”formalizing” my relationship to the institution and I sort of hinted back that I wouldn’t mind that (it might have been the other way around, details…details). Thus, they’ve offered me a position and I said yes. It’s obviously part-time, my condition makes full-time employment unrealistic and also I’m on benefits which means there’s a lot of rules regulating how much I can work and earn. A job is a job though, and working at a place whose purpose is to make a difference for people and not make money for a owner is a privilege. I can’t say anything else except that I look forward to being a small part of this place and make a tiny contribution to the very meaningful work they do. Yes, if there’s any doubt, I’ll confirm that I am in fact an idealist, although I’ve surely had my share of illusion-robbing experiences and accumulated substantial quantities of bitterness so far in my life.

I have to brag about the  people that work there, because they are fantastic, very friendly and truly into what they do. It’s really inspiring to be around people like that and I enjoy it very much. Of course, working at a place like this is more than just a job for me. It’s something I can’t say no to because I so honestly believe in what they are doing and know from personal experience the importance and necessity of their efforts. Hence, 2 1/2 hours of traveling time per work-day don’t stop me and I maintain a tight sleep rhythm by getting up at 06:30 every bloody day, even when I’m not working, in an attempt to function more or less okay on the work days (I’ve had sleep issues for more than a decade).

What the future will bring I do not know, there’s still many different threads that need to be tied together for the  tangled bunch of fibers that is my life to become a rope, and it won’t happen with the blink of an eye. I always think of it as finding a balance between my skills and abilities, my medical condition and energy level, quality of life and some participation in professional life. I have a definite need to do something constructive and productive, yet it need to balance with actually having a life too. All work and no play, makes the blind ‘ol bat Mac a dull boy. I do feel healthier and better than in many years, I live with an amazing woman and my photography is certainly a creative outlet, a general focus and who I am. I can’t beat the realities of my severe medical condition, but I can most definitely live with them (got no other choice, do I?).