What Does It Feel Like To Be Blind?

“I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.” – Helen Keller

“Blindness“—how effortlessly sighted people type or say this word, isn’t it? But have you ever thought about how it feels to be blind? How does it feel not to see anything that surrounds you? Trust me, even if we try our best, we cannot relate to the psychology or feelings of a blind person if we never experienced it.

Imagine waking up and not being greeted by sunlight streaming through the glass of your windows. Or imagine a world where you can touch and feel objects but cannot see their actual shape or the magic of colors. This is the world for a blind person. They don’t know what the shades of white, red, or blue look like. For people who are blind, life becomes a symphony of sounds, textures, and scents—a constant dance of awareness that most of us overlook.

The World Beyond Sight

“What do blind people go through?”— It is a legitimate question, especially considering how different their lives would be if they had a vision. When asked how they picture the world around them, a blind person would begin describing shapes and contours in words. A person with sight would use their eyes to show instead of tell. Life would easily be deciphered as a visual cue. In comparison, blind people seem to escape the visual caves of their minds and make the most out of the other senses since they rely only on touch, hearing, and smell.

Blind people make hearing and smell their primary source of navigation. Water, smooth stones, and the wind can be felt instead of seen. That’s how a blind man’s life ends up becoming. The scent of bread, a flower, and even the rain becomes an image for a blind person. Vision-painted life is all they know. Everything around them spurs and stimulates them other than crammed grey matter in the skull, which is common when virtually looking at the world.

The world without beauty is irrational. For a blind man, everything has emotion, so why not beauty? That may be a warm swaying breeze, a soft voice of the mother that resonates with the soul. Beauty for them is not lost but instead is found redefined.

Emotional & Psychological Landscape

Blindness certainly comes with its own set of challenges. For instance, dealing with societal stereotypes or coping with a world built and functioning around the sighted can be challenging. Most of the time, blind individuals face physical barriers to accessing education and job opportunities. But for the majority, it does not mean that sight loss is a disaster; instead, it’s how they get on with life, and on most occasions, such kind of life is full of creativity.

Blindness also influences the way individuals perceive and connect with the world. For example, instead of judging others based on physical appearance, a blind person may focus on the tone of voice or the meaning behind the words spoken. Relationships formed by blind individuals are often profoundly authentic, as they are based on genuine character rather than superficial judgments, which can be shared among sighted people.

Furthermore, an intense world inside their mind is what many blind individuals talk about. They claim that many of their thoughts, imagination, and emotions are vivid, rich, and free from the bombardment that comes with visual stimulation. Moreover, it allows them to strengthen their self-individuality as well as their perspective of the world, as there are many things people who are sighted take for granted.

Misconceptions About Blindness

The foremost and most common misconception about blindness is that being completely blind is equivalent to being completely dark inside. However, it is essential to note that there are varying degrees of blindness. Some people can detect dim light, shapes, or colors, while others may not have any form of sight. One more thing to consider is that you will only understand what dark is if you have seen light, but when you have never seen it, you will not be able to compare it with darkness.

Another misconception is that the blind people are defenseless. The truth is that they are very self-sufficient, relying on more skills, tools, and even more unyielding willpower. Using assistive tools such as screen readers, speech recognition software, and GPS apps, blind people do not lag in society.

Many blind people have careers, attend school, and participate in sports or the arts. Blindness has not prevented world-famous musicians like Stevie Wonder or paralympic professional athletes from achieving success.

What the Blind Teach Us

It is said that the blind teach the sighted something about resilience, resourcefulness, and flexibility. It also enables us to see the beauty in our other senses. How often, as sighted individuals, do we think about caressing a tree’s bark, the amalgamation of sounds in everyday life, or the wafting scent of the most loved dish?

Surprisingly, blind people through their powerful experiences ask us to stand still and value our surroundings! They show the importance of perseverance and how to overcome them.

Life as a Blind Person

Blind people’s lives are constantly changing. Most things that seem easy to the sighted can be tricky for a blind person. Walking inside crowded areas can be pretty challenging, as the blind must dodge uneven sidewalks and many other obstacles. Of course, blind people are equipped with assistive tools like canes, guide dogs, or blockers to help them remain careful, but even then, significant focus is required.

Blind people tend to employ strategies like marking their belongings in braille or customizing their items to assist with daily tasks. Another alternative they may rely on is smart home technology.

People may find engaging with a blind person challenging. Rather than blindness, people’s ignorance and biases make it difficult. Blind people are rarely considered “normal” or independent. Instead, they are viewed as fragile and needy. This is reflected in how they act because most blind individuals are self-sufficient and demand respect rather than be viewed as charity cases.

A World of Strength and Possibility

As previously mentioned, limitations need not be looked at as a flaw but as an opportunity to strengthen yourself. Life is a blend of purpose and feeling, sound and light, which every person, regardless of blindness, focuses on.

The next time you think about blindness, don’t consider it a limitation. Instead, consider it a way of experiencing the world differently, which is just as beautiful. And possibly, through that, you will also learn to view the world in a slightly different manner.