“I feel like a shadow of myself.”
This sentiment arises, and it often arises in those exact words, when I am in conversation with blind clients, both in my role as an assistive technology trainer and in my function as an integral coach. There is a good reason for this. I myself am blind, and there is a certain amount of identification between us when it comes from our shared lived experiences.
Loss, Empathy, and Compassion
This dynamic often contributes to two simultaneous states of being when I am in these conversations. The first is a feeling of empathy. WE are both on similar journeys, and whether the goal in the present is to develop technical skills like creating a pivot table or managing a contact group, or the much larger holistic challenge of navigating the world as a blind professional in a world that does not seem built for us, we are both approaching the task from similar points of challenge, and with similar experiences of loss. The second feeling is one of compassion. Receiving the thoughts, feelings and sensations of the person I am working with from a position of care, inquiry, and support is what is mine to offer.
While my path into blindness has been long and winding to an extent that even the Beatles would find exhausting, I believe that anyone experiencing disability can relate to the way a shift in our ability status affects our entire perspective. Stuck, confused, angry, distraught – the list of emotions that bombard our hearts and intrude into our minds is complex and ever changing, and moving through feelings of loss is not exclusive to those of us with disabilities. It is a fundamental part of being human, and encountering those experiences that make us feel like shattered glass is inevitable. There is, though, a certain amount of top-level clarity in my conversations with my blind clients, a shorthand that comes from traveling similar roads.
The 80/20 Fallacy
Here’s a statistic that can, in its simplicity, lead to problems. The statistic is this: eighty percent of the way human beings interact with the world is based on visual input. That is a fact that, on its surface, may be true, but I feel that this fundamental belief leads to some unproductive assumptions, and really, aren’t all assumptions more than a little unproductive?
Here’s that assumption. If it is true that eighty percent of the way we encounter the world is via eyesight, then does it automatically follow that a person who loses their eyesight is down to twenty percent of their perceptual capacity or ability? It makes a certain kind of intuitive sense. If you begin a journey with ten gallons of gas and you burn off eight of those gallons, you’re left with two gallons. If you have a pie with ten slices and you serve eight of those slices, you have two slices left. If you have… well, you know where I’m going with this.
I feel this logic is categorically flawed, although I do bow to reality. I’m blind. This is a true fact. You do not want me to be the person who gives you a ride to the airport. That ride does not end well.
However, my capacity to take in life with so many of its colors, shades and hues (I use these terms metaphorically, of course), is very much alive and well. There is an ongoing rebalancing of the senses, an attunement to what I need to live in the world to the best of my capacity. I will note that I am saying “to the best of my capacity” and not “to the best of my remaining capacity,” and I feel this is a distinction with a difference. This distinction results in a way of moving through the world that has had profound implications on my life and on those of all of my coaching clients, including those in the disability space.
Turning the 80/20 Fallacy Into 100%
An example, if I may. I will never forget the first time I was able to notice, without eyesight, when I had arrived at the corner of an upcoming intersection. That first time, it was the rush of wind that hit the left side of my face as the barrier of the buildings along my left fell away. It was like discovering a new color, and I remember thinking to myself, ‘has this been here all along? How did I not know this was a possibility?” With practice, there were so many more discoveries to come. The feeling of an opening in space and a lessening of the air pressure, even with smaller falloffs from barriers like houses rather than ten story buildings, even when there was no guidance from wind or air flow. The crispness of sounds from the intersecting street traffic was another surprise. There are other feelings and kinesthetic sensations that I still find difficult to describe, and this is in large part because I am still in that murky middle ground of my own journey and growth. However, I’m hopeful that what I’m relating lands to some degree, that what has been happening is a rebalancing, not a diminishing. That the availability of these sensations and observations has been waiting for me all along, and I had not been aware of that possibility. It is not working at twenty percent capacity. It is very much working in a different flow to attune my reality to a truer version of my full capacity.
I feel somewhat obligated to mention a version of a comment I made during a Ted talk almost ten years ago, because that observation still feels true. I did not become a real-life version of Daredevil with “the other senses just taking over.” That is a myth. I do not fight crime. The Kingpin does not have a new nemesis. What I am very much attempting to relate is that blindness can result in a rebalancing, a different kind of fullness where what had been only twenty percent of attunement can become, with work and practice, a different kind of one hundred percent.
You may also notice that I am taking care to use words like “can” “progress” and “possible” in this post. This kind of rebalancing and perceptual shift is not automatic and it is not like riding a bike. Our brains can be reattuned to process nonvisual information in a spatial way, converting the visual cortex into something that we may more accurately call the spatial cortex, but it, in my opinion, requires regular effort, refinement and attention. It’s one of the many reasons I feel more comfortable with phrases like “practice makes progress” or even “practice makes possible” rather than the impossible to achieve “practice makes perfect.” For my blind and vision impaired clients, integral coaching, which is grounded in the principle that we can move through growth and depth by attuning to all of our intelligence centers – mind, heart, and body – one of the first shifts that can lead to feeling less stuck, less trapped and just less, lies with moving through an acceptance that we as blind people are not shadows of some attachment to a former self. We are not twenty percent. WE are one hundred percent of whatever we are meant to be and one hundred percent of who we are meant to show up in the world as. Further, I feel that this is an issue, while critical in the disability space, is just as relevant in our culture as a whole.
An Offering and an Invitation
So, I pose this question. Are you facing a loss that seems insurmountable? Does that loss seem intolerable? What is it that is prompting you to feel that you are only a smaller percentage of yourself? Do these thoughts feel true to you? If so, I have an offering, and I invite you to sit with it. The offering is an additional question. Can we say with absolute certainty that this story is true? If there is a part of you, no matter how small, that is open to this possibility that the biggest loss or challenge in your life might not mean that your overall capacity is permanently diminished, then this is a viewpoint that deserves inquiry and conversation. These are shifts that result in the kinds of conversations that make coaching such a deep and meaningful experience on the road to growth and depth.
I welcome your thoughts and observations, along with your own offerings and invitations, along with a sentiment that has served me well over the course of my life…
Onwards!
Article by Michael Schwartz, Accessible Technology Trainer, Certified Integral Coach®.