Embrace change even if it seems disastrous….here’s why

image credit: greenbookblog.org/2014/12/30/embracing-change-in-mr-a-year-end-perspective/

There’re only two kinds of experiences: things building up to a cataclysm, and its mellow or messy aftermath.

Your childhood environment sets you up for the time when you grow old enough to get a driving license (or buy your first drink); your life at home prepares you for the battles outside. And so it goes on. As for me, the only before-after scenario that mattered the most was the trauma of going blind in phases and how I felt when it became a reality.

It’s been twenty seven years this month since I completed the slow freefall into blindness. As I described in my memoir “Lights Out”, published in 2014, the days and months leading up to my total sight loss was nightmarish. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I kept praying that the degeneration should stop at a stage when I could still see the world, while the idea of not seeing the green trees, blue sky, the tower of Madras Central station with the huge clock like the face of a happy Englishman, and so many wonderful pictures, was heartbreaking.

When sights and pictures were reduced to a mere recollection and vision was no longer an instant luxury my eyes could savour, I found life not as terrible or unlivable as I imagined. Life, indeed, solidified into something meaningful around my disability. When something becomes a reality, we all learn to adjust to it and I guess that was what happened to me after my eyesight kept dimming until what remained was not even enough to see my palm splayed over my face.

In the immediate aftermath, adjustment continues for months and years and is longer for someone who refused to come to terms. You like to be defiant, want to show people that you’re not cowed down by blindness, but also refuse to equip yourself to handle the limitation.

You go out with friends. And feel your body trembling when they walk ahead forgetting that you need help, and you’re too shy to howler. You stop at the road crossing wondering if it’s better to ask for help –something you had never done in your life- or take a chance and run across the zebra line like a scared chicken.

And, most significant of all, you sometimes wonder if you could ever step out alone. The attitude to blindness, in short, was a seesaw between false bravado and naked terror.

On a humid July evening in 1991, I walked into the Melody cinema (in General Patters Road, a chaotic bylane forking out from the arterial Mount Road in the southern Indian city of Madras( or Chennai as it’s known now) with a few friends to watch the latest Bollywood flic Maine Pyar Kiya (I’m in love). The music was borrowed (or shall I say copied) from the English popular tunes and the story itself was as old and stale as any romantic yarn.

I reclined on the seat, expecting at least to get a glimpse of the hero or the colourful and romantic numbers that played one after the other, the chief delight of Bollywood movies, and realised I couldn’t see at all. It was like someone slapping me hard. I sat up, squinted to get a little glimpse, a shadow to satisfy myself that things weren’t as bad as I imagined, but no such luck.

By this time, even close friends and relatives identified themselves because I was no more aware of their presence than the tables and chairs I frequently bumped into. People I hadn’t met for a long time tried introducing themselves with painful awkwardness, working hard not to show it. I’d swallow several times in shock and disbelief in order not to sound pained or disturbed.

Mom, desperate at this stage to make me independent, took me to Christoffel Blinden Mission (CBM) that ran an orientation and mobility programme for the blind. When the instructor Mrs. Sahai handed me a white cane, I refused it.

“Let’s not force him. He’ll learn it himself when it’s time,” she said, gently withdrawing the handle of the white cane she handed me. Those were golden words, because I use white cane now and never cared what others think once I began using it.

Twenty-seven years later, I’ve what that Meatloaf song calls a clear view of ‘objects in the rear-view mirror’.

The first hit of fading eyesight wreaked real terror; the uncertainty was harder to handle, but when blindness hit the shore like a menacing cyclone, you know the aftermath isn’t anything worse. You learn to do pretty much everything, right from shaving before the mirror (who cares if you can’t see) to eating with cutleries (though not too frequently).

With miracle gadgets like laptops and smartphones, productivity never appears like a problem it once was.

Yes, blindness twenty seven years ago was cataclysmic, it seemed like an accident from which I never thought I’d recover. But in another way, blindness has also made me a constant learner, forced me to find solutions and rammed home the point that change, even the most disastrous of them, isn’t so bad as it seems.

If you’re one of those who believe in creating a positive environment to remove negative feelings that impair your ability to live your dream life, you might like to check out the newsletter I’m jointly producing with a fellow journalist Sujitha Jyoti. We both have the experience of going blind and turning every limiting experience into opportunities. Our experience in interviewing experts, successful individuals and people who strive to create a positive life has left us with a wealth of information to share.

Like this counsellor who got his doctorate in Neuro Linguistic Programming disregarding his slow death; the way he counselled people out of addictions. Plus positive affirmations that changed our lives which you can use too.

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