The news headlines of 2022 have been dominated by disease, war, and conflict, but the good news is that we still live in a world of empathy, compassion, and kindness for the most part.
All around us, we see people struggling.
Some people’s struggles are more easily seen than others: a homeless man asking for change on a street corner, a single mother working two or three jobs to make ends meet, or a widow or widower who spends most of their time alone and misses their significant other dearly.
Through it all, we rarely think of the vision impaired among us.
But their numbers are greater than we’ve been led to believe.
There are approximately one million blind people in the United States according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and we rarely hear their side of the story.
If you’re like me, you’ve probably never wondered about what it’s like to be blind, but recently a video flashed across my screen on YouTube that had my full attention.
‘A Blind Person Describes What the World Looks Like’ is its title, and with over 2,600,000 views at a length of 11 minutes I knew it was something that I needed to set aside time to watch and fully digest (more on that a bit later).
What Blind People See When They Close Their Eyes
The word “blind” is a broad term.
Some people who are legally blind can see reasonably well with corrective lenses according to Healthline.com.
In this case, we mean blind in the context that most people recognize, in reference to a person who can’t see anything at all.
We all know that blind people can’t see objects or sunsets or rivers or mountain streams in the real world, but we do know what most of them see when they close their eyes: typically, nothing at all, or in some cases, lights, colors, and shapes.
So, what happens when a blind person wants to get a better idea of what the world looks like?
That very scenario is the premise for the video mentioned above, which I will place below for your viewing pleasure.
A Blind Man Describes The World as He Knows It To a Young Boy
In the video, a blind man on a bridge speaks with a young boy who had been sitting with his feet dangling over the edge.
He asks him to stop a while and describe what the world looks like, so that he can imagine it better in his mind.
Without giving too much away, the boy ends up learning a surprising lesson, while the blind man helps the boy to see the world in an entirely different light.
If you have 10 minutes to set aside to watch this video, do not hesitate.
Watch the whole thing, and heed the lessons within.
It just might make you stop, slow down, and change your perspective.
To me, it’s exactly what I needed at a time where a lot of things feel backwards in this social media algorithm-driven, “get it done yesterday” world, where we perceive and experience life with our minds first and our senses second.
Watch the story unfold in the video below, and let us know if it made you see modern life from a different perspective the same way it did with me: