necessary deafness

I recently started watching a series called "switched at birth". Some of the actors are deaf and communicate via sign language ( I actually started learning how to sign. Cool stuff). From watching the series, I thought to myself that, there is actually a need for deafness. Although I'm not referring to deafness in literal terms.

Pride stops us from doing somethings even when its killing us not to. But I don't think pride is as worse as a sharp ear that is too quick to grab anything said. Someone was telling me to do something which will actually be beneficial to me but the first thing I thought of, was: " Ah! What will people say. People will obviously talk." In as much as my pride was talking, my listening ear was also communicating and I think it communicated more loudly than my pride. I listened to a sermon which more like addressed everything I was thinking about....... Thinking about what people will say, can really stop you from doing a lot of things. It can be in a positive way or vice-versa. Positive as it can stop you from doing somethings which are morally questionable. On the contrary, negative as it can cause you to give more power to people over your life without you knowing.

I thought about it and I'm like; if I keep listening and thinking about what people will say, I won't be listening to myself and working towards achieving my own goals. So I came to the conclusion that as hard as it might be, we need to turn off our ears once in a while so the voices of people won't drown our own voices. Ironically, we atimes need to be deaf in other to hear : )