An Eye-Opening Experience

Photo: AberdeenDiversity

Empathy can be hard to come by unless you experience firsthand what others do. When it comes to blindness and visual impairment, that’s nearly impossible short of an accident or a debilitating illness. Until now.
 
Many organizations are holding events such as “Dinner in the Dark,” where sighted attendees are asked to eat their meals blindfolded. Menu items are read aloud, and instructions are given as to how to navigate one’s plate and place setting, using clock positions for reference. This gives people with sight a small taste, literally, of what it’s like not to be able to see.
 
I attended one such event put on by the Arizona Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired and found it quite eye-opening, pun intended. And to be honest, I didn’t like the experience. I felt isolated and left out. It was difficult to keep up with conversations around me, especially with the normal restaurant din. As an introvert, I found it that much more challenging.
 
Despite that negative sentiment, I felt free from societal pressure of those around me, as I couldn’t see if people were criticizing me or my actions with their looks. I lacked the social cues to tell me I shouldn’t be doing things a certain way.
 
I left that event much more grateful for my sight, but also more appreciative of my friends who are blind and visually impaired. They live in a sighted world not designed for them and are often treated as second-class citizens. But it’s not their fault they have visual impairments. No one wakes up one day and says, “I’d like to be blind the rest of my life.”
 
If you ever get the opportunity to attend one of these types of events, I highly recommend it. It’s life-changing. I’m more determined now than ever before to treat people who are blind and visually impaired the way I would have liked to have been treated as a temporarily blind person: included and important. 

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