Blindness and a spectrum of colour

Wonderfully, thanks to medical advances, the number of people whose sight is completely blind is declining.

Sadly, due to human regression, the number of people ‘blind’ to others, their views and situation is increasing.

To see others we must first learn to understand, listen without evaluation and empathise.

No matter how opposite our worldviews are with another person, we can only influence, if that is what we seek, by understanding their world, their experiences, their environment that has shaped their views.

After all, there is no black and white, right or wrong, just a giant spectrum of different coloured worldviews.

Blind drawing

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Today I attended a workshop run by my mate Doug and it was themed around exploring art and sound.

It was focused on how noise and sounds might impact our productivity and work and exploring that using art.

A fascinating few hours and some really interesting thoughts and insights were shared.

One of the exercises that Doug set was to draw blind, quite literally covering our eyes and then drawing.

This to me was an exciting and liberating exercise. It brings uncertainty.

The thing is if you do different things, change some of the environment and take away something such as sight that we take for granted, we can actually take away some of the barriers and use others skills that perhaps are idle when we rely on for example our sight.

I am not suggesting that we always wear a blindfold, especially a bad idea for driving, but occasionally it is refreshing to challenge ourselves in ways that take us out of our comfort zone and allow other skills to be used, to see what we are capable of in challenging situations.

It also helps realise that if we can draw blind, then perhaps we are allowing other excuses to hold back our progress.

Take a sheet of paper, a pencil,cover your eyes and give it a go.