What Do You Hear?

Last week the whole Yanny and Laurel audio become viral. While some could hear Lanny others heard Laurel.

We all stopped work at my office just to figure what was going on. I could just hear Lanny and no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t hear Laurel at all.

Initially I wasn’t freaked out as I thought it had to do with frequency. As you get older you stop hearing high pitch sounds. So I assumed that Laurel was in a higher frequency which wasn’t audible to me. Which also made sense as the youngest ones in our office were hearing Laurel.

But the more I researched the net I found out that Lanny is the high pitched one and Laurel the low pitched one. That freaked me out. Why couldn’t I hear it then. Couple of my colleagues and my husband could hear both. What was going on. Things had just got a bit complicated? It was not something my knowledge of science was able to explain. What the hell was going on??!!

The other time I had got this freaked, was a few months back. I had just finished meditating with my eyes closed and chanting Aum just before going to bed. I had never done this before this late in the night and don’t think I will ever do it in future. I opened my eyes to find my cats staring at a point in space.

Now cats and dogs do that blankly stare in space thing. But never had I seen all my cats looking at the same point. Even shaking their heads like they were following something. Wide eyed…. like they get when they see pigeons sitting outside our window but a bit scared as well. I tried to distract them with their toys but nothing was going to distract them. At this point I woke up my husband, who initially was like just go to sleep, but was himself wide awake when he saw how these guys were behaving. They were not moving just staring at a point in space and when one of them moved their head the others did the same. Like they were seeing something we couldn’t.

I looked at Rio, who was sitting closest to me and asked him are you seeing something. At that moment he broke his stare and suddenly looked at me for a few seconds and then went back to staring at whatever they were all looking at. Me and my husband were totally freaked at this point. And then suddenly they all just went about doing their own thing. God knows what they saw….. still a mystery to this day. They haven’t behaved like this after that day.

I love solving mysteries and leaving them unsolved annoys the hell out of me. And yet its frustrating to know there’s so much around you that you can’t see or hear or feel or taste. But they exist.

As for the Lanny Laurel mystery, well it turns out that older people hear Laurel which is lower pitched. So great that meant my hearing was better than the 20 year old interns at my office. But why did some hear both. Apparently your brain makes the choice for you as to which of the two are more important to hear. By focusing really hard you can train your brain to hear what you want it to hear.
I tried to focus really hard on Laurel and then slowly I could hear it!!!! I was so excited. Now I am able to hear both Laurel and Lanny. I can switch between the two by focusing on the word I want to hear.

Watch this video till the end it will blow your mind.

This experiment made me wonder as to how many more things are out there that go completely unnoticed by me because my brain is tuning into something else. For this was not just a test of my hearing but a test of my perception.

If I focus really hard can I start seeing, feeling, hearing and tasting things I couldn’t before or will it just be me making myself belief that I am. For I may have 5 awesome senses but my perception rules over them all.

In the end the question is not whether you hear Lanny or Laurel but are you seeing things that don’t exist in reality or are you missing out on things that exist around you!!

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