Before you begin reading this article, let’s do a small exercise. I want all of you to feel intently about what I say. How would you feel if you had no clue how you looked like? How would you feel if you were not able to see the person sitting next you? How would you feel if you were not blessed to see how brightly the room you are in was lit up? When you hear a sound and if you could not see where it come from, but had to only imagine being blind wouldn’t the curiosity/ vivid thoughts/imaginations running in your mind kill you to know what just happened around? The blind live this way their whole life. Feel the difference between being blind and being blessed with vision.
The girls there greeted us heartily. I got a real warm welcome, which I have never gotten in any of the other schools, close to 500 kids I have interacted with till now. They made me feel like I belonged to them. I realized that greeting someone is a vital aspect while building any relationship.
Being intrepid, they asked questions without the fear of being judged. They couldn’t see, so they probably didn’t care what anybody else thought about them or how the other person reacted to the questions they asked. They asked questions for which I had no answers, proving me wrong that these girls were introverts. In daily walk of life, I have come across many individuals who pretend to know everything when they know nothing. Is it because we are all able to see how the world sees us, and for the fear of being judged, and for the fear of being rejected our self-esteem doesn’t allow us to learn new things and instead lets us be dumb our whole life? Vital lesson I learnt was that, it is always good to be dumb for a minute or two rather than being dumb your whole life.
The most striking quality I found in these girls was their communication skill. How many of u think you are good listeners? Listening is the vital aspect of any effective communication process. It was evident that these girls have mastered the skill of listening. Not a single conversation had an overlap of speech. 9 out of 10 times I don’t see this happening with people I interact with on a daily basis. I observed that, because these girls don’t have vision, they put most of their effort in listening meticulously. They take time to interpret speaker’s thoughts, frame the response in their own mind first and then reply. Unlike most of us, they hear to listen and not to respond.
Their disciplined lifestyle made me feel ashamed of my lifestyle, leaving me with a feeling that I have been a blind with vision. They cleared the area they sat in. Put the chairs back to the place. How many of us at least put in little effort to clean the place we are seated in, before we move out? It’s a shame if we don’t do that little being blessed with vision.
As quoted by Lionel Hampton – “Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind”, those little girls showed gratitude by singing for us mellifluously towards the end of the session. No one has ever shown me reverence in such an awestruck manner till date.
These girls might not have sight, but they definitely do have a vision for life. They perceive everything by touch, by voice, and by intuition. One of the teachers, held my hand n said I think you are very slim just by the sense of touch, and I indeed am. They catch your emotion by your voice. We see through our eyes, yet not always we rightly construe the emotions of the person at the other end. Are we blind with vision? Are we deaf with ears? Are we insouciant because we are blessed with every sensory organ functioning the right way? Are we apathetic because we have the ability to empathize? We have all those abilities and yet we don’t always empathize, do we? All of us have a vision but we are still blind to all others. They are blind to the world but they have a vision. Feel the difference between the blind with sight and the blind without sight. They have opened my eyes, not the ones with which I see, but my heart with which I can feel. Don’t sit there & be blind but take a moment to appreciate the sense of sight we are all blessed with & open your heart and inner eyes to everyone out there and empathize.
By Divya Venkataramu
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