Adversity is the Best Teacher.
An excerpt from our founder Kiril Sokoloff on conquering the greatest challenge of his life: deafness.
The following article was originally published in “What I Learned This Week” on December 3, 2015. To learn more about 13D’s investment research, please visit our website.
My life has been defined by my deafness. So let me begin with the lesson of that experience. Essentially, deafness is about failure at the most basic and fundamental level of human interaction — communication. If you fail over and over again at something, you have two choices. You can give up or you can become stronger. I pledged to myself that I would never give up. And that I would live a normal life in every way, never saying no to an invitation, no matter how stressful the event might be for me.
Hellen Keller was blind and deaf. She said, “The blind are cut off from things and the deaf are cut off from people.”
At 15, I had difficulty understanding the words in songs. At 18, I had my first hearing test and found that my high-frequency (speech) hearing was fading. The erosion continued and, by my mid-20s, I could no longer understand speech in noisy places. High-powered hearing aids and phone amplifiers helped for a while, but could not put off the inevitable.
Increased deafness brings fear. In the mid-1980s, when my hearing loss accelerated, I never imagined I would be totally deaf in a few years. In the spring of 1988, I went skiing in New Mexico. Maybe the high altitude reduced circulation to my auditory nerve. Six weeks later, my “good ear” was totally deaf. The suddenness of the loss scared me profoundly. I knew that it was only a matter of time until I lost the hearing in the other ear. But that knowledge did nothing to eliminate my growing fear of the unknown and the mounting stress I felt as I tried to cope in a world that was becoming quieter and quieter.
I still had to talk on the phone for business. At first, we put the caller on a speakerphone, and my associates took notes. Then, we put a computer in the conference room, and whenever anyone called, my assistant typed the conversation on the computer screen. Unfortunately, I was unable to hear the nuances in people’s voices. I didn’t know whether they were happy or angry or impatient or cold. I didn’t know when they finished talking. I frequently interrupted unintentionally. Since my assistant could not type as fast as speech, I missed a lot, sometimes an entire conversation. There was a long lag between a question and its appearance on the computer screen. But this was better than not using the phone at all.
Meanwhile, the deterioration in my hearing continued relentlessly. Then one morning I woke up and could no longer hear my own voice. There were hundreds of days when I didn’t think I could go on.
But I did go on.
According to a Chinese proverb: “If you get up one more time than you fall, you will make it through.” Or as Samuel Beckett wrote: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Later, he put it even better: “I can’t go on…I go on.”
Rudyard Kipling put it bluntly: “We have 40 million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.” Joseph Daniels believed that “defeat never comes to any man until he admits it.”
Or, consider Vince Lombardi’s unforgettable words: “The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.” John Wooden inspired UCLA to the best record in the history of college basketball with the following belief: “Success is never final. Failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.”
You never know what you can endure until you have been really tested, failed, hit bottom (you think), staggered to your feet again, only to be thrown to the floor again. Deafness made me who I am. Deafness molded me, toughened me and softened me, shaped my character and the way I look at life.
Switching your mind from the negative to positive is really a development of the heart, a personal transformation. It is only adversity that makes you question who you are, how you must change, and what you need to learn. Suffering deepens and awakens the soul. Suffering heightens sensitivity. Suffering leads to spiritual development. Suffering makes you know what’s really important. Suffering teaches you compassion for others. Suffering teaches you to forgive yourself and to open your heart. Suffering makes you appreciate what you have, not what you miss or think you want. Suffering raises your consciousness, so you feel more deeply than before and see beauty everywhere.
But, the greatest lesson of deafness was learning the importance of surrendering to the will of God. Somewhere on the road to deafness, I realized there is a force vastly greater than the human will. You stand on the beach, feet planted firmly in the sand, jaw set and determined, muscles tensed — and suddenly a tidal wave comes and flattens you. I came to accept that deafness was bigger than me. I lay down before this superior force, God’s will, my destiny, and swam with the current. This revelation was perhaps the most profound emotional experience in my life.
In the fall of 1996, I had a cochlear implant, a form of bionic ear. They surgically implant electrodes in your head, which stimulate the brain directly. You must learn to process speech all over again, which can take a long time, depending on the person. I became a classic example of neuroplasticity, a brain that changes itself.
It’s now Thanksgiving of 1996. I’m in Sun Valley spending the holidays with Jack Hemingway. Jack has a big mustache and he mumbles, a devastating combination. I say to Jack: “All these years, I never heard a word you said.”
“Yes, I know. It’s been very frustrating for me.”
“Now, I can hear you.”
As the evening progresses, I come to know Jack Hemingway as he is, an exciting revelation for me. I ask if he remembers his father’s short story. “In Another Country.” The young Nick Adams is injured in World War I and is in physical therapy. He meets an Italian major, the finest swordsman in Italy, whose hand is mangled and who recently lost the beautiful wife he adored.
The Italian says to Nick Adams: “If he is to lose everything, he should not place himself in a position to lose that [his wife]. He should not place himself in a position to lose. He should find things he cannot lose.”
I tell Jack that I read the story when I was fourteen and it made a huge impression on me. It was a philosophy worth adopting, although life played a trick on me — as it does on all of us.
Then, I realize something profound, my life’s epiphany, if you will. I realize that one-on-one conversations, like this, mean more to me than anything else in the world. This gift was taken away from me. Then given back.
Then came the Internet and texting, with voice less and less important. The best time in the history of the world to be deaf. What a miracle!
Deafness gave me many precious gifts. I became an even more voracious reader. I developed an acute intuition. Forced to become a bystander, I learned powerful skills of observation. Through loneliness and despair, I grew as a human being, and I found compassion on a large scale. Conquering the challenge of deafness, I traveled on a long journey of my soul.
–Kiril Sokoloff, Chairman and Founder of 13D Research
This article was originally published in “What I Learned This Week” on December 3, 2015. To subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit 13D.com or find us on Twitter @WhatILearnedTW.
