Sight stands alone among the senses. You will never be able to tell how something looks by the way it feels the same way you can tell how something will taste by the way it smells.
How can the blind ever be able to understand sight? Attempting to understand what the world would look like when you have only heard it, only smelt it, only tasted it and only felt it is like trying to travel to another dimension. I know better than anyone; I was blind once.
I came into the world wrapped in darkness and have always ached to tear away its veil. I wanted to know what the difference was between a masterpiece and a blank canvas, between a starry night and a sunny day.
When I heard that there was a way to heal my blindness, a simple surgery that could remove the cataracts that had hidden the world from me for so long, I was elated. An exhilaration fluttered at my insides like the wings of a captured butterfly do against your cupped hands, and it only grew stronger in the days after the operation as I waited for the day I would be able to remove the bandages.
On that day, I went outside, despite the worries of my doctor that it would be too bright. The open air, heavy with the fragrances from spring blossoms and light with bird songs seemed to call to me.
As I felt the bandage over my right eye being eased off my skin, the butterfly transformed into an eagle beating within me with its mighty wings so that as soon as the bandage was off, my eye was open.
Immediately, the light assaulted me. It pierced me like a volley of arrows that embedded themselves far into the back of my brain. My eye slammed shut again as quickly as it had opened, and a shiver of fear ran through me. I waited until the other bandage was off, and the throbbing had subsided, before tentatively trying again.
The light attacked, but not as violently, and after a while it gave way to something else - color. It sprang out of the world jubilantly and danced before me like the melody of a song. I tried to tell which was which, but I couldn’t. I knew that the sky was blue, but I couldn’t tell which way was up. Overwhelmed, I stumbled to the ground and ran my hand over the grass. Its familiar sensation of prickly softness greeted my fingers, but it seemed so distant from what I saw. Green! The word merged itself with the color. So, this was green.
I looked over vast expanse of green that must be the lawn and saw where it met with other colors and forms and fear stole into me. The familiar world under my fingers seemed so distant from the one that I saw. I felt lost and disoriented.
Those who can see are terrified of the dark. They feel as if the world disappears when they cannot see it, as if they are being caught in a vacuum. Yet, seeing was the most terrifying thing to ever happen to me. Sight seemed to laugh at my safe world of sound and smell, to turn it upside down and play tricks on me. It is so frightening and yet so beautiful.
A gift is not always what you would imagine, especially one that you could never imagine in the first place. But, don’t refuse it just because of that, for I would tell every blind man, if he has the chance, to see.
