Some folks will know what triggered this post, some won't. I've written similar things before.

It's kind of frustrating sometimes to realize how much of the world is locked out for you because you can't hear, or speak a certain language, or aren't a certain age, or have a certain financial situation or race or gender, or orientation, or... anything.

Yes, there's always a tremendously rich other-subset of the world that is accessible to you. And there are ways to get around things so that you can reach those spots of the world that are harder for you to get to, or that you're not "supposed" to be in. And technically speaking, every member of the human race has parts of the world that aren't accessible to them (for instance, most of us are not tetrachromats).

But it's still hard to sit on one side of the wall and know that many people sit on the other side - that in fact, most people sit on the other side - and that there's information and data and things you can never do or grasp no matter how hard you try, but that's there for the taking for most people who take it for granted.

I'll probably never be driven half-mad by an earsplitting fire alarm, or woken incessantly in the middle of the night by a baby crying, or hear someone whisper to me things I'd rather not know. (Then again, technology is a wonderful thing, and who knows?) I don't begrudge my lack of those experiences, and I'm happy with what I've got (for instance, I lipread, type, and scan text input faster than almost anyone I know by way of compensation), but I'll also never stop wondering what they're like.

I wouldn't swap my body-functionality or my skillset or my life for anyone else's, but I wouldn't mind trading them for a day or two, just to be able to listen to birds, even once. I'll probably never get over that. And that's okay. You play the hand you're given, but that doesn't mean you never wonder what things could have been like, had the cards been shuffled differently.