On Becoming Visually Impaired

We become visually lazy living in big urban centres and we teach our selves to stop looking, to make no eye contact, to not appear to be staring. Riding on the subway is an experience contrary to so much of what it can mean to be human. In the urban centre other people are potential threats and one must be alert to danger at all times but one doesn’t want to invite danger by making eye contact with the wrong person and in fact one doesn’t want to invite a friendly exchange with a stranger either, so the gaze is inward and on the floor or the ceiling. How uncomfortable it is to ride amongst people and try at all times not to have any contact with these people whatsoever. Then out on the street there is concrete and buildings, few of which have any aesthetic dimension, and regardless are all familiar from years of walking the same streets to work or home, and so the glance is down to watch your step and not much else. The attempt to not see, the habit of not seeing, the effort exerted to not see or not even look, takes its toll and requires work at the visual gym to overcome.