I often wonder how I would react to a sudden permanent impairment or disability. I don't know why I do this, it isn't like such morbid rehearsals of woe prepare one for reality. Nothing prepares anyone for anything, that's my motto. Every dramatic life development experienced by every single person throughout the eons of human history was, is, and will be endured as a sudden shock from nowhere, a bolt from the blue. We reel from catastrophe to catastrophe with dizzying randomness like infants cruelly buckled into electric bumpercars with the forward pedals pressed down by carefully-placed bricks. This is just how it is. But we can choose to look at it positively, and consider it an excitingly disorienting game, like becoming lost in a hall of mirrors or hedge maze. Your heart is racing and you think you might be about to die of a panic attack, but afterwards you lie and swear it was lots of fun.

Take blindness. Blindness isn't that rare, and it isn't hidden from anyone, yet what could possibly prepare you or ease your transition from the world of sight to the world of permanent darkness? I admire blind people, who doesn't, but it's truly an alien condition, despite the fact that we can easily mimic it simply by closing our eyes. There's a vast difference, after all, between not looking for the moment and not being able to see at any moment. How would I handle such a condition? These are things I think about, maybe I wonder what the answer might have to say about what kind of person I am now.

With blindness and me, there are some obvious problems right off the bat. For instance, I am a self-conscious person who does not like to be observed and who does not like to be surprised, and both of these circumstances would certainly be dramatically more commonplace if I were to lose my sight. My abhorrence of scrutiny is all fine and good when I have a reasonable chance of knowing about it, and my dislike of surprises is hardly a tenable position when my ability to anticipate has been robbed of its primary tool. Take a simple kiss from my significant other, for example. According to my current proclivities, it would have to play out something like this:

Me: Hello? What are you doing?

Him: I am approaching you with the intention of thoroughly kissing you, of adhering my lips to yours in a romantic manner. I fully expect that some tongue insertion and wagging or thrusting movements of a kind that traditionally indicate passion will be involved, so please prepare yourself accordingly.

Then, after some nice if somewhat scripted kissing occurs, I pull back:

Me: Are your eyes closed? When we're kissing I mean.

Him, after a beat: Yes.

Me: You didn't answer right away. If your eyes had been closed you'd have just said so, no hesitation. I can't take it, I am kissing you and you are looking at me, how creepy can you get? I feel assaulted. I feel violated and filthy. It's like some kind of visual rape.

You can see how a certain spontaneity is lost and how a self-consciousness crippling to the romantic setting envelops the scene. But can I change my personality to accommodate my new sightless world? Would I have a choice?

I can start by trying to separate my idea of me from my own visual self-perception. This might help me overcome my skittishness and paranoia, by grounding my self-image in a deeper and more profound set of convictions slightly more impervious to the vagaries of circumstance. Then again it might not. It's a hard thing to do, and not just for me. If I were to go blind, I can imagine having no idea who I am anymore. My usual cues, shallow as they are, would be missing. I would be "vague recumbent figure enshrouded in darkness." That's not a workable idea of self by anyone's standards. When I lie on the couch reading I can gaze down at my foreshortened body and know who I am, which is important despite the bitter humor which usually accompanies such an observation.