If there’s anything we’ve learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s that small personal choices can have big impacts! We often imagine that we only “get out what we put in,” but it’s all too easy to forget about the times when a small gesture can have major, lasting consequences.
Chaos, Normality, and Choices
Like Jeff Goldblum’s explanation of “Chaos Theory” in Jurassic Park—where a butterfly flaps its wings in Peking and alters the weather in New York City—simply putting on a mask can prevent a major spread of disease, and simply putting in some earplugs can prevent major consequences for our hearing ability.
The COVID-19 pandemic has taken live music events from us for two years. While we are not completely out of the woods yet, it feels like we are reaching the other side. Soon, we may be out enjoying live performances from some of our favorite musicians once again.
But we should hesitate to frame this development as a “return to normality.” What is normal, anyway? Life is constantly changing and evolving, and while it may feel like things were “put on hold” for the last two years, the time has progressed, lessons have been learned, lives have begun, changed, developed, and—sadly—ended.
We continue to proceed through life—the aggregate of our responses to needs real and imagined, and the impacts of others doing the same. What may have once appeared “normal”—at the time we stopped moving for long enough to look at it—will never be normal again.
Now Is the Time for New Habits
As we start to frequent our favorite venues, bars and festivals again, we have an opportunity. Rather than jumping ecstatically and thoughtlessly back into our old ways, let’s think carefully about the aspects of our behavior that were appreciable or not.
If you grew up in the United States, chances are people have been telling you throughout your life about the importance of protecting your hearing. “Once you lose it, you can’t get it back!” You may have had hearing screenings at your school or job. Medical professionals have probably told you about the importance of protecting your hearing when engaging in loud activities. They’ve probably told you about the importance of keeping the volume down on your listening devices (PLDs).
If you’re a person who doesn’t wear hearing protection at loud music events, at some point you have to make a conscious decision to behave that way. You’ve known your whole life that loud music causes hearing loss, but you started attending concerts with unprotected ears, anyways. Much like someone who started smoking cigarettes in the 1990s, you made a conscious decision to ignore widespread, good advice about how to avoid a tragic outcome. Now is the time to re-evaluate that decision and decide, once again, whether it is really what you want to do.
Do you remember why? Did you find ear plugs uncomfortable? Did the foam earplugs you wore muffle the music so much that it didn’t sound good anymore? Maybe at the kind of music events you were attending, the culture indicated it was “uncool” or “weak” to wear earplugs. The point of being there was to damage your hearing. Did you agree with that at the time? Do you still agree with it?
Custom-Molded Earplugs Are a Game-Changer, for Many
If you are a frequent concertgoer, it is likely worth investing in custom-molded earplugs. These are the most comfortable, most effective, most transparent-sounding option for music listening. Your hearing care professional will assess your hearing ability, check and, if necessary, clean your ears, then take an impression of your ear canals. Your earplugs will fit you perfectly, reduce the level of sound by about 15 decibels, and retain the frequency spectrum as it sounds natural by reducing all frequencies equally.
If you’ve worn foam earplugs before, you know how much they can upset the balance of frequencies, making music nearly unlistenable. Other options for reusable earplugs, often sold specifically for music, promise to keep the frequency spectrum intact, but only come close. A set of custom-molded earplugs will provide a truly sonically transparent listening experience at a safe volume level, so you can enjoy live music in all its glory!
If you’re ready to make a change and want to have a set of custom-molded earplugs made, or if you need to consider hearing aids, make an appointment for a hearing test today and start forming the habit of caring for your hearing health!