Eye Cables? Really?
Most of the fallacies that come to mind if, indeed I ever ponder the word, are external. The one I have chosen to write about is one I made up myself when I was very young. It was one of my first attempts to understand my blindness.
I don’t remember how old I was when I began to wonder what made me unique. I know that the very thing that was my difference, also kept me from being able to understand it. If you are wearing braces, walking with crutches, or are using a wheelchair, for example, it’s rather obvious to you what makes you stand out or sets you apart from other people. You’d have to be blind not to notice. Well, there’s the rub! I was blind, and in the very beginning, I wasn’t aware that other people were not. I did not even know what the word “blind” meant.
As time went by, I knew that blind meant different, and I began trying to figure out what exactly this “difference” was, and what caused it. For a short time, I thought maybe it was a family condition. It made sense that these people who were always with me, day and night, would be just like me. We were family and that should mean something. Perhaps it should, but I soon realized this was not it. So it seemed that I, alone, possessed this “difference”
As I thought about it, it seemed that I had a lack of something. Things that I examined with my hands were talked about differently by others. They had more, or different knowledge than I, such as color. I longed to know what color was. I was desperate to find out what was “wrong” with me so that I could get it fixed and be like everyone else. I wanted what they had, but first I had to discover exactly what “it” was.
I asked as many questions as I could at the time, but I didn’t get many, or satisfying answers. I knew that everyone had eyes and these were what gave all of this “extra” information I didn’t get from my fingers. I had eyes, but they didn’t work. So why were my eyes broken? No one seemed to want to talk about it beyond the fact that they didn’t work. I wasn’t sure if it was a secret, or if they really didn’t know what the problem was.
I knew that in order to “see” something in my environment, I had to reach out my hand or hands and touch the object and move my fingers over it to gather as much information as they could provide. It made sense to me that if I had to do this, there had to be a way for eyes to do the same thing. I believed they must have to leave the head and travel to an object in order to see it. I decided there must be a sort of cable system in people’s heads. I imagined that each human head had a button on the back and when pressed the eyes would spring out of the head on long, thin cables and land on the object they wanted to see. After rolling around for a bit and gathering all possible information, the button could be pressed and the cables would be retracted back into the head. I decided I was missing either the cables or the button. I began looking at people’s heads to try and find the button. My sister once commented that I had a head fettish. I was to young to know what a fettish was, but I knew I had to see enough heads to determine where the secret button was kept. When I didn’t find it, I decided I was missing the cables. I also thought perhaps the desire to see something was enough that it would send the cables out to seek the desired object. So thinking that you wanted to see something projected the cables in the same way that my desire to touch something caused me to reach for it. I stopped looking for the button. I’m sure this made my family quite happy.
I worried about possible problems that people might have with their cables and wondered why no one ever spoke about having any of them. I imagined a huge crowd of people at a baseball game and thought about how many cables there would be. It would be a mass of cables. They could get tangled, or broken. Did people have spare cables? Did some people lose their eyes and become blind? I wondered how much cable was needed to see the stars and how it could all possibly fit into the head and still leave enough room for the brain. I thought about how painful it must be to have crossed cables, resulting in crossed eyes, and I decided that must be what caused headaches. I never had them when I was a very young child, so this seemed reasonable. I wondered why there were never eyes on me and I figured it was because I couldn’t look back. People don’t like to look at you if you aren’t looking at them. I didn’t know whether to feel lucky because I didn’t have to deal with all of that or sad because I could not.
I am sure vision works incredibly well the way it truly is. The Divine is a much better creator than I am and has thought it all through much better than a three or four-year-old, but this was my first attempt at making sense of something I truly did not understand.
I don’t remember how old I was when I began to wonder what made me unique. I know that the very thing that was my difference, also kept me from being able to understand it. If you are wearing braces, walking with crutches, or are using a wheelchair, for example, it’s rather obvious to you what makes you stand out or sets you apart from other people. You’d have to be blind not to notice. Well, there’s the rub! I was blind, and in the very beginning, I wasn’t aware that other people were not. I did not even know what the word “blind” meant.
As time went by, I knew that blind meant different, and I began trying to figure out what exactly this “difference” was, and what caused it. For a short time, I thought maybe it was a family condition. It made sense that these people who were always with me, day and night, would be just like me. We were family and that should mean something. Perhaps it should, but I soon realized this was not it. So it seemed that I, alone, possessed this “difference”
As I thought about it, it seemed that I had a lack of something. Things that I examined with my hands were talked about differently by others. They had more, or different knowledge than I, such as color. I longed to know what color was. I was desperate to find out what was “wrong” with me so that I could get it fixed and be like everyone else. I wanted what they had, but first I had to discover exactly what “it” was.
I asked as many questions as I could at the time, but I didn’t get many, or satisfying answers. I knew that everyone had eyes and these were what gave all of this “extra” information I didn’t get from my fingers. I had eyes, but they didn’t work. So why were my eyes broken? No one seemed to want to talk about it beyond the fact that they didn’t work. I wasn’t sure if it was a secret, or if they really didn’t know what the problem was.
I knew that in order to “see” something in my environment, I had to reach out my hand or hands and touch the object and move my fingers over it to gather as much information as they could provide. It made sense to me that if I had to do this, there had to be a way for eyes to do the same thing. I believed they must have to leave the head and travel to an object in order to see it. I decided there must be a sort of cable system in people’s heads. I imagined that each human head had a button on the back and when pressed the eyes would spring out of the head on long, thin cables and land on the object they wanted to see. After rolling around for a bit and gathering all possible information, the button could be pressed and the cables would be retracted back into the head. I decided I was missing either the cables or the button. I began looking at people’s heads to try and find the button. My sister once commented that I had a head fettish. I was to young to know what a fettish was, but I knew I had to see enough heads to determine where the secret button was kept. When I didn’t find it, I decided I was missing the cables. I also thought perhaps the desire to see something was enough that it would send the cables out to seek the desired object. So thinking that you wanted to see something projected the cables in the same way that my desire to touch something caused me to reach for it. I stopped looking for the button. I’m sure this made my family quite happy.
I worried about possible problems that people might have with their cables and wondered why no one ever spoke about having any of them. I imagined a huge crowd of people at a baseball game and thought about how many cables there would be. It would be a mass of cables. They could get tangled, or broken. Did people have spare cables? Did some people lose their eyes and become blind? I wondered how much cable was needed to see the stars and how it could all possibly fit into the head and still leave enough room for the brain. I thought about how painful it must be to have crossed cables, resulting in crossed eyes, and I decided that must be what caused headaches. I never had them when I was a very young child, so this seemed reasonable. I wondered why there were never eyes on me and I figured it was because I couldn’t look back. People don’t like to look at you if you aren’t looking at them. I didn’t know whether to feel lucky because I didn’t have to deal with all of that or sad because I could not.
I am sure vision works incredibly well the way it truly is. The Divine is a much better creator than I am and has thought it all through much better than a three or four-year-old, but this was my first attempt at making sense of something I truly did not understand.