Envision and Appreciate

[BenKoch]

I sat there in the room with 20 other people. We were all mostly the same except for me, I was different. I was blind. Everyone there knew exactly what their families and friends looked like, but I didn’t know what anything looked like. So I started to picture, actually I more… envisioned the people’s lives that I had talked to that day based on what they had told me. It started with a man named Will; we had talked earlier that day so I started to think about what he had said. He had talked about his dog called Galileo. He described how Galileo always looked out the window and barked at the people passing by and how Galileo’s leg would twitch when you would scratch him right above the tail. I could start to see an animal lying there squirming on the ground. This was great so I wanted more. I thought about a conversation I had with a girl named Jenna. She had talked about her passion for photography. She told stories of how she climbed a mountain to get a picture of the northern lights. She said the colors in the sky were the most amazing thing she had ever seen with vibrant green and beautiful blue. Soon after thinking about this, I could start to picture colors in the sky flashing about. I noticed I had a huge smile on my face and I couldn’t even really see the things that were described. I then thought about how I would never see these things and a single teardrop streamed down my face. I was both happy and sad, but especially happy for the opportunity I got to envision these things. I realized then that you should appreciate every opportunity you get and live life to its fullest. I decided to never feel sorry for myself again because I really wasn’t missing out on anything, I was just getting different opportunities.
Please Comment Any Feedback You Have!

[cafolini]

I agree. The opportunities in the how-we-are-made are as infinite as the things you might not want to see. I loved this piece. Thanks for sharing.

[BenKoch]

Thanks for the feedback!

[hillwalker]

Not too shabby a start. I think it has potential to be a much longer piece. The rather too neat ending came so abruptly and almost out of nowhere that it seemed you had written that first and just wanted to force the story into following the most direct route from A to B. Life is never that straightforward and the beauty of your premise is that there's no limit to the way imagination bolsters our perceptions.

The first 3 sentences provide a reasonable hook to keep us reading but they also pulled me up short. If the narrator is blind how does he know how many people are in the room? or that he's the only blind one there? The entire 'waiting room' scenario is a distraction, but otherwise a worthy piece.

H

[BenKoch]

thanks for the feedback!