Re: Do you feel excluded?
Hello,
On the question of being included or excluded, I think a lot depends on who are you surrounded by and on what situations occurs the interaction with those that you communicate. For the past seven years, I'd say 95% of my overall interaction has been with sighted people. The only time I am in contact with a blind person is when I talk on the phone to someone who needs my help in regard to a technology-related issue; something which I do voluntarily almost everyday.
Being in settings where blindness is never a matter of concern, I have to adjust to the life of those whom I am surrounded by. So in this respect, I have learnt to talk about things that to me are completely trivial, like how I was almost meeting a well-known VIP but he had left 5 minutes before I reached the airport. This to me doesn't make any sense at all but it's just to keep the conversation going. Everyone who is sighted does it, so why shouldn't I?
Another thing that gets me angry is when my friends start talking about traveling. It's not that I haven't traveled enough; its because I don't focus on those things that sighted counterparts do. So let's say I'm on holiday with three sighted friends, and we sit in a prestigious bar beside a beautiful lake. We start discussing about the design of that bar; and while my friends will talk about the design of the tyles, how the lights of the bar contrast with the landscape of the lake, I will talk about the calm atmosphere that the little waves from the lake create and how relaxed you feel over there. I have to think about those things that I can't conceptualise very well so as not to seem uninterested, indifferent, or bored of the conversation.
Then we go to the instagram thingy which I hate, so . . . soooooo much.
So I never thought of creating an Instagram profile, simply because I felt I don't belong to that network of people. It seemed a completely crazy idea because it just wouldn't make sense to me how could I make use of it. Everyone in my class had an instagram profile. All of my cousins and relatives had one, from the youngest to the oldest. My brain was stormed daily with things like how beautiful was Jane's story, how John's friends were having the time of their life in an excursion, and so on. And, not to forget, in every meeting I would have with some new people, I would always get the question: do you guys have like . . Insstagram? So I went ahead and set up a profile on instagram and started exploring. Basically, I found anyone and everyone I had met and come across in my life there. I started following people and they would follow me back. I would check in special places and post photos from there. I go to some new place, take a picture and ask my brother which is the best photo to post. This idea, in its entirety, seems totally fake to me. In every photo people post, they are never themselves. It looks as if they are posing for an international magazine and the next day they will be talked about all over the world. I post photos almost weekly; sometimes sitting at a bar, sometimes playing with a dog, and sometimes traveling with a friend. I don't like the idea, as I said, however I don't know why I keep doing it. Perhaps because everyone in my community does it?
So, do I feel excluded? I'd say yes and no. I could say I do feel really excluded in some situations, especially when going at a party where it is quite difficult to keep up with what's happening around. Nevertheless, I don't feel excluded at a lecture or seminar. Even in those things that contain much visual content or in those activities which require sight to be understood, I don't feel quite excluded because I know that I can't do anything about it, so I use my imagination to speculate what's going on. It could be never correct, but at least it stimulates your mind. I can hardly ever remember any case where I felt ignored when voicing my opinion at class. Generally, since I was always a good student, my classmates perceived me as quite competent and reliable so they must have thought he should be right. In a family setting, on the other hand, ignoring has been much more common for me. It surely tends to get me upset, but when my family members meet with my constant persistence, they give up.
This attitude is almost always unproductive, but that's how I was grown to be. They taught me to be confident, to believe in myself and my principals, to keep and keep going despite obstacles, and so on.
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