I have completed my empathy training at long last. I blinded myself Friday night prior to going to bed and spent all day Saturday blind. The experience was very enlightening. I forced myself to live a day in the life of a blind person and the experience was in many ways much different than my pre-conceived notions.
I took notes (difficult when you can't see) on my thoughts, feelings, and experiences and am currently in the process of writing my experience into a single document. I will include the document in a subsequent blog (possibly a shortened version) and will send the complete document to all ten tigers members.
This experience has completely and irrevocably changed my perceptions of what most people refer to as handicaps and has proved to me what I have always suspected; A person is only handicapped if they choose to be. They may have to travel a different path, steeper, rockier, possibly even more difficult, but they can and do arrive at the same destination.
Much more to come on this subject....
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Uummm, it's going to take convincing for me to believe that handicaps are less a burden than I thought. Certainly frame of mind is crucial -- it is in everything we do -- but if one day I were to wake up blind forever ... Well. Even the thought of that is scary.
ReplyDelete