R. Yosi said: All the days of my life I was troubled by this verse: “And you will grope at midday as the blind gropes in the darkness.” (Deuteronomy 28:29) What difference does it make to a blind man whether it is dark or light? Until the following incident happened to me: I was once walking on a pitch black night, and I saw a blind person walking on the road, and he had a torch in his hand. And I said to him, My son, why are you carrying this torch? He said to me, As long as this torch is in my hand, people see me and save me from the holes and the thorns and briars.
“I’m losing my eyesight. It’s a condition called retinitis pigmentosa. It starts with your peripheral vision and moves inward. It’s not too bad for me yet. Sometimes I don’t notice when somebody is trying to shake my hand. And sometimes it can be hard for me to keep track of what line I’m reading. But I got the disease from my father, and he went completely blind in his 40’s. So I try to spend as much time as possible looking at things like the colors of the leaves and cool cloud formations.”
What do we do when we need to be noticed? What do our students do?
How do we attune ourselves to see the world through the eyes of people different from ourselves?
