Wednesday’s blind wisdoms – fearing the blind!

Good morning blind wisdom seekers.

Thank you for joining me for another glimpse into the world of the blind. In searching for inspiration for today’s entry I came across an article entitled Why we fear the blind written ByROSEMARY MAHONEY in which Rosemary explores her own emotions towards blindness as well as an experience that taught her much.

Here is that experience for you to read. I’ll join you back at the bottom of this excerpt.

A few years ago, I allowed myself to be blindfolded and led through the streets of Lhasa by two blind Tibetan teenage girls, students at Braille Without Borders. The girls had not grown up in the city, and yet they traversed it with ease, without stumbling or getting lost. They had a specific destination in mind, and each time they announced, "Now we turn left" or "Now we turn right," I was compelled to ask them how they knew this. Their answers startled me, chiefly because the clues they were following – the sound of many televisions in an electronics shop, the smell of leather in a shoe shop, the feel of cobblestones suddenly underfoot – though out in the open for anyone to perceive, were virtually hidden from me.

For the first time in my life, I realized how little notice I paid to sounds, to smells, indeed to the entire world that lay beyond my ability to see.

The French writer Jacques Lusseyran, who lost his sight at the age of 8, understood that those of us who have sight are, in some ways, deprived by it. "In return for all the benefits that sight brings we are forced to give up others whose existence we don’t even suspect."

Thanks for being so articulate about blindness Rosemary. As a blind woman I appreciate you sharing your insights as a sighted woman with the sighted world. Thank you also for understanding that the blind tap into a world that is very often unseen by the sighted.

Unless…….

You start noticing what you smell, hear, taste and touch!

“I may not see but I can smell

And taste And touch and listen

And when I do this every day

I find my optimism!”

That blind woman

Julie Woods!