When the two-year-old woke up after the operation, he cried out to his mother, “I cannot see. Mom I cannot see anymore!” Undaunted, his mother reassured him, “Ben, you can still see”. She took his hands and pressed them against his fact, and said to him, “You have hands, you see with them”. She also put her hands against her nose and told him, “You have your nose you can still see with your nose”. And finally, she touched his ears and said to him, “If you can hear me with your ears, then you can still see me”. However, the most important words that she told her son that day were, “You do not have your eyes anymore, but you still have your hands, your nose, your ears and your tongue. You still have a lot”. The message to you, dear reader, is that you may not have everything, but you have a lot.
In the coming years, his mother dissuaded him from wallowing in self pity. One day, when he was five-years-old, Ben surprised his mother by telling her the size of the building they were driving past. Ben had discovered what scientists call echolocation, the ability to sense objects in one’s surrounding by detecting echoes that come from them. Ben learnt how to make clicking sounds with his tongue, he would then listen to the echoes form these sounds. From the echoes, he could tell the location and size and even shape of objects in his surroundings. Using this technique Ben went on to master contact sports such as basketball, rollerblading, football and skateboarding. He would even compete in athletics event. However, when he died from complications of cancer, he left us more than just the lesson that humans can actually see without eyes. We will examine the lessons.
