Being Blind

This afternoon, as requested, I put on a blindfold and tried navigating around the house whilst completely blinded. Luckily, my step-dad had already made coffee and offered to pour me a cup, so I didn't need to risk scalding my hands by pouring hot coffee on them. After getting a cup and undoubtedly spilling half of it on my way to my room as I fought my way up the stairs like a caffeine drunkard, I decided to read a book to experience what it was like for blind people to read. 

Although I didn't catch a whole lot of what was going on in the book, it was still interesting nonetheless. I realized, though, that that perhaps wasn’t the most efficient way to experience the sensory change that comes with blindness, but it did give me a good idea of some of the limitations that the lack of a visual input brings. Instead, I opened up one of the windows in my room, felt the breeze hitting me in the face, and I put on some music - although that in itself was pretty difficult as well. The lack of vision made me focus more on the music and thus enjoy it all the more, which was a fascinating experience. In that way, I suppose that each one of our senses brings with it a certain type of “pollution”, in the sense that the lack of, in this instance, visual distractions makes all other senses that much keener, I especially experienced an increase in my auditory awareness.

Therefore, I would say it was an interesting experience. The strongest contrast to me, however, lied in the limitations on what I was able to do. The shift in the importance of sense I described earlier wasn’t very significant to me, sadly, which I tried to change by forcing it, through additional auditory input, i.e. music, which did bring some change with it. However, I have no doubt that, were I to leave the blindfold on for a longer period of time, this enhancement of the other senses would become much more prominent.