Today on the bus, I encountered a boy, maybe 10 years old, with his father. The boy was mostly blind, and he behaved in a way that is not totally common among sighted children his age, and even less common among adults: he was unapologetically and thoroughly curious.
“What is all that beeping?”
“Is this a new bus?”
“Does he have his turn signal on?”
“Why is the bus going ‘beep beep?’”
Why sure, he’s blind, one might say. He’s trying to figure out all the things happening in the world that are completely evident to the rest of us. Right?
Well, is all of this really evident to us? Was that a new bus? I don’t know. I guess maybe? What was that beeping? Does he have his turn signal on? Why the heck is the bus beeping? (Dad figured out it was indeed the turn signal.) While answers to many of these questions may have seemed self-evident to the sighted, the fact of the matter is that most of us simply don’t care.
I realized something, which is that, while this young man’s unknown world is marginally larger than mine (by virtue of the fact that he doesn’t have vision), our unknown worlds are effectively identical — the number of things I personally do not know, even with my sight, are vast and innumerable and far greater in quantity than what I can see. The problem is that we simply don’t realize how “blind” we truly are to the vast unknowns in the world and the universe. We can’t admit it, because we think it makes us weak to do so. But what truly makes us weak is unwillingness to ask questions, to be curious, and to accept how blind we truly are.
Someone lacking sight is forced to be curious in order to survive and to learn that which is not self-evident. For those of us with sight, survival is less at stake, since we’ve created a world that is generally safe for those who can see. But I would argue that lacking curiosity keeps us all weak and impotent.
This boy has been forced to accept his blindness, and curiosity is his tool for understanding the world. Those of us fortunate enough to see should, too, accept our blindness and use our curiosity to better see the world.
Post script: I do need to briefly acknowledge the beautiful love, kindness, and patience shown by this father. Being a kind and patient parent to a non-disabled child is challenging enough. Being so to a child with a disability must at times be unimaginably challenging and trying (and, I imagine, also extremely rewarding). This gentleman’s energy and love for his child filled me with such warmth, and he set a beautiful example (at least in that time we were together) for what a parent can be. Kudos to this man on the B24 bus, the evening of November 1, 2019.
