A life without sight.
During my childhood I was diagnosed as having poor eyesight and was prescribed glasses to assist with my vision correction. I realize how blessed I am to have had that as an option. I was always in awe of the environment and creatures who inhabited the various areas of nature. The sense of vision is very important and without the ability to see an individual would be missing out on many colorful life experiences. Blindness, which is the lack of the ability to see is a very dark and challenging disability. Without one’s eyes, everyday activities such a walking, reading, eating and identifying people can be a struggle. It has been proven that the brain will adapt to the loss by giving itself a makeover. If one sense is lost,
the areas of the brain normally devoted to handling that sensory information do not go unused they get rewired and put to work processing other senses. This is why the blind can rely on the sense of sound to guide them, just by tapping on objects they pass by or listening to sounds to sense their distance. The blind also use their sense of touch to identify individuals and to read using braille. Without the sense of sight, the blind also identify things such as food by using their sense of scent as well. There are many resources available to the seeing impaired, and I feel strongly that society has assisted with the equality of these individuals, as there are many programs to aid in the employment and living environments to make living life easier with an impairment.
In the short story Cathedral, by Raymond Carver, there is a direct contrast between a blind man named Robert, and the narrator. The narrator has full use of his senses, and yet he is limited to the way he sees things, and the way he thinks. Robert however, has a very different outlook on life and how he sees things, as well as the use of his senses. At the end of the story, Robert has the narrator close his eyes to try and get him to experience the world the way he does. The narrator ends up being able to not only see the way Robert does, but he also is able to feel the world in a completely different way. The author suggests that the mind is most important in how people view things, and the judgements we make are based on what we see in our heads, instead of what is really there.
Understanding of Children with Congenital Profound Visual Impairment." British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 22.1 (2004): 1-17.
My idea of blindness came from the movie. In the movie, the blind move slowly and never laugh. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs. The blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to”(4). This way, Carver shows how blindness can hold back people in the world today.
My father made a successful recovery and I became inspired. I realized that having the gift of sight is something people take for granted. Therefore, when I embarked on my undergraduate journey, I partook in several activities to help foster my thirst for knowledge about optometry. For instance, I became the treasurer of the pre-optometry club at the University of Florida. As an executive board member, I opened doors for others to find their passion for optometry through managing our budget and finances to sponsor trips and activities. Meanwhile, I also worked as a secretary and shadowed at the Eye Associates of Orlando, where I gained practical knowledge. I also volunteered for the KidSight Vision Screening Program where I entered data of visio...
In literature, blindness serves a general significant meaning of the absence of knowledge and insight. In life, physical blindness usually represents an inability or handicap, and those people afflicted with it are pitied. The act of being blind can set limitations on the human mind, thus causing their perception of reality to dramatically change in ways that can cause fear, personal insecurities, and eternal isolation. However, “Cathedral” utilizes blindness as an opportunity to expand outside those limits and exceed boundaries that can produce a compelling, internal change within an individual’s life. Those who have the ability of sight are able to examine and interpret their surroundings differently than those who are physically unable to see. Carver suggests an idea that sight and blindness offer two different perceptions of reality that can challenge and ultimately teach an individual to appreciate the powerful significance of truly seeing without seeing. Therefore, Raymond Carver passionately emphasizes a message that introduces blindness as not a setback, but a valuable gift that can offer a lesson of appreciation and acceptance toward viewing the world in a more open-minded perspective.
For the dancer, music and choreography are paramount. The music guides the dancer, and the moves express the music. However, the dance has to start from somewhere.
"My father was an alcoholic, and I did anything I could to stay away from home. I chose that college because it was the farthest away. But I hated it there, and didn't do very well. Then I began to worry that I'd flunk out and have to go home, and of course my grades just got worse."
Confucius compares education to the sculpting of marble. He said, "Just as the sculptor is to the marble, so is education to the soul. It releases it. For only educated men are free men." I see college as an irreplaceable time in my life when I can begin my journey to find the freedom that Confucius so eloquently describes. While in college, I want my education to bring me face to face with the awesome power of the human spirit and the human mind working together to achieve the beautiful and the revolutionary.
Just as everyone’s perception differs their comfort zone also differs. People are born and adapt to the surrounding physical world but if it is limited that does not mean these people are bound to be uncomfortable. In “Seeing Annie Dillard shows, “a twenty-one-year-old girl, the doctor relates, ‘Her unfortunate father, who had hoped for so much from this operation, wrote that his daughter carefully shuts her eyes whenever she wishes to go about the house, especially when she comes to a staircase, and that she is never happier or more at ease than when, by closing her eyelids, she relapses into her former state of total blindness ‘“ (414). The girl was only familiar with her blindness and not aware of her new sight, so she preferred to close her eyes in peace. Dillard describes in her book, patients recovering from cataracts surgery and being given sight. Some patients cherish their sight, thinking it is an absolute miracle, but others hate their sight because it is so unknown to them. Dillard then tries not to take her sight for granted but cannot see as the newly sighte...
Vision is something many people take for granted every day. Society only deals with the matter of being blind if they are the less fortunate ones. According to the Braille Institute, "every seven minutes a person in the United States loses their sight, often as part of the aging process" (1). Only two percent of legally blind people use a guide dog and thirty-five percent use a white cane. Blindness can be caused from various different types of things including (in order) age-related macular degeneration, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy and age-related cataracts. (Braille 1). However being blind does not mean a person is in total darkness. Some people can see lights and the shapes of objects, but the most import thing is for family and friends to provide hope and encouragement. The last thing a person who has lost their sight wants is to lose their family and support, which will led to loneliness. Likewise, in the short story "Cathedral," by Raymond Carver's, blindness is the key element in the story and shows in detail how the characters manage it. The theme Carver conveys in the short story is being able to see without sight and is revealed through the characters, tone and plot of the story.
I went to the ice cream social and invited my cousin who's deaf, she lives in Turlock and her name is Nery. Her boyfriend, Robby, wanted to come along but he got busy cutting hair, he's a barber. I mention him because he is also deaf. He's been using a hearing aid since he was small and took therapy sessions as well which makes it seem like he's hearing. He does say his words a bit cut off but we still are able to understand him. He's always laughing and being very sarcastic. My cousin Mary on the other hand is not able to speak. A little background about her: she was born in Mexico and when they moved to California that's when my aunt, Amalia, and uncle, Jose, put her in a school for deaf people. She was later transferred to high school where she
Have you ever been blinded before? If not, I haven’t either! Emily Dickinson lost her eyesight at an old age due to eye restrains by writing poems during dark nights. Despite her disability, she wrote two poems describing her blindness. In the poems, she talked about sight and darkness, but what is she really trying to say about it on a metaphorical level? In both poems, Dickinson is comparing sight to a life full of order and happiness. A life of dreams and goals. By losing “sight”, your life changed and turned for the worse.Darkness can be seen as the unpleasant things of life.
When a society goes blind, things begin to change. Things become harder to do with the lack of vision. People 's behaviors change when they are filled with darkness, when they can 't do anything for themselves, and when violence erupts. They start to forget who they are and lose their humanity. They are no longer human, but animals. In "Blindness," Jose Saramago demonstrates how his characters that lack vision act like animals by being brutal, disheveled, and absurd. Instead of coming together and help each other, his characters are hostile and vile towards each other.
In middle school I was diagnosed with a disability with the way I expressed myself through writing. Ever since, I have gained multiple values and learned several lessons about self confidence. I was taught to push past my limits, in order to be successful in reaching my goals along with my dreams. Today I am a senior in high school who was once thought to struggle, but was able to succeed beyond expectations. To some, a disability may seem like a setback from achieving goals, but to me I used it as a challenge for myself. I accepted myself for who I was and looked at my disability as a unique trait of mine. I was able to provide a message to others that anything you set your mind to is possible with dedication and hard work. It might take
Furthermore, living with invisible is not easy, the people who are legally blindness, they have a lot of limitations in their life. There are difficulties in work and living in society. They cannot drive and work in the career that requires the eyes be important. In some people who are acquired blind, they might still not accept their own status, feel sadness, fear, and cannot take care of themselves. Legally blind people have a hard time of life than normal eye people. They have a dangerous life because they cannot see