What's your blind spot? Playing table tennis without vision Titelbild

What's your blind spot? Playing table tennis without vision

What's your blind spot? Playing table tennis without vision

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 Can blind people play table tennis? “Yes we can” says Brendan Wright who gradually lost his vision until becoming completely blind over 20 years ago. Brendan is a huge sports fan and a multi-sport athlete who participates whenever he can. He is an accomplished four stroke swimmer, having won numerous medals at the Special Olympics, and plays “Beep Baseball” with his blind friends in the Los Angeles area. Still not fully satisfied with those limits, he wanted to try table tennis to explore whether it might be possible to play that sport without being able to see the ball. And it’s worked! Although the rules of the game differ, Brendan is now an accomplished ping pong player. Check out the video above to see how he can do that.Like others who live their lives with what we call a “dis-ability,” Brendan has learned to live a fruitful, active, and basically happy life without the benefit of vision. His abilities are astonishing. Compensating for the absence of sight, Brendan’s ability to feel and to understand the contours of his environment is astonishing. And his hearing capacity is so much greater than mine that you might as well call me “deaf.” He hears the world with astonishing precision and tells me what I’m missing.Based on research over the past half century, we now realize that many animals have ways of registering the world that are very different from human ways. And in many cases, more accurately attuned, more perceptive. In other words, all living beings have “blind spots” that go along with their specific ways of encountering the world. Beyond perceptual blind spots, we all stumble through the world with a wide variety of mental blind spots, cognitive leaps and gaps that shape how we perceive and understand the world in which we live.People who realize this—and cultivate the ability to notice—are able to recognize the strengths, weaknesses, and differences between a wide range of people. Picture those with a poetic sense for the world, with an artistic sense, with an acute connection to the natural world, with the capacity to understand animals in some intuitive way, with a musical ear, with a natural inclination to be quiet and listen or to be articulate, vocal, and humorous, with a chef’s ability to differentiate between tastes, with a natural ability to learn many languages, and on and on and on. People live incredibly interesting lives with different kinds of perception that support very different skills, and although we label some differences as disabilities, that label often blinds us to other people’s natural gifts. When the power goes off and the city is pitch dark, Brendan can navigate his environment as though nothing has changed. When I can’t hear subtle sounds in my environment, Brendan teaches me what I’m missing.The career that I stumbled into for very contingent reasons—a professor of Religious Studies and Asian Studies— forced me to acquire some level of sensitivity to human differences. I found myself exploring different cultures, different spiritual sensitivities, different philosophical takes on who people are or could be. Looking back, I can see how fortunate I was to spend my life learning to understand and to appreciate these differences. Other people—all of you—spend their lives with other occupations, other pursuits and as a result develop different sensitivities, different skills and ways of living. Human diversity is the engine of our collective creativity and a posture of open generosity to others is what sustains peaceful, productive living.For all the reasons above and more, I spend considerable time and some money to help support blind athletes—men and women who participate in the Special Olympics or who play “Beep Baseball.” For anyone interested, I invite you to join me in this endeavor by making a donation to support the Beep Baseball team featured below. Although, having spent my career as a teacher there are serious limits to my capacity as a donor, I am happy to offer to match all donations up to a limit of $2000. Here is a brief video on how blind men and women play baseball and a link for donations to help this team afford to rent a field for practices, purchase equipment, and travel to Beep Baseball tournaments around the USA:➡️ https://www.socalbeepbaseball.org/donate/Krzysztof here: Dale, who some of you may know is the author of The Six Perfections: Buddhism and the Cultivation of Character, wrote about the cultivation of generosity as the first important step on the path of seeing beyond the limits of one’s world . It’s a bit squeamish for Dale to talk about his own writing, especially in the context of encouraging donations to his son’s Beep Baseball team. So I’m going rogue here by adding this commentary and a pithy reminder from that book: We can only give to the extent that we are truly free, and are not possessed by our possessions, or our money, or ourselves. This is a public ...
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