The Adventures of the Blind/Low Vision/Visually Impaired (BLOVI) Girl- Volume 86: Redefining how I Socialize in the New Social Network
This week, as I mull over the blog I will write about death, I am sharing another chapter from my book, Enlightened: How Losing my Sight Gave Me Vision. This chapter deals with how my visual impairment affects my ability to interact in both the cyber and actual world and what I have gained and lost from it.
Chapter 23
I am at a restaurant or a Starbucks or a club and it is always the same. I look down the bar, or at the tables, to see people playing with their phones. The light from the screen partially illuminating their faces. Faces staring blankly, at least in my mind, at their gadget as they ignore their surroundings and the people right in front of or next to them. And the scene is repeated in the line waiting to get into a bathroom, or the door of a crowded restaurant or in a line of seats at a coffee shop. A row of people and their smart phones connected but truly disconnected. A world, a way of being, now foreign to me. Thank god for that.
As the ways we communicate have changed over the past three years, the ways I communicate have also changed, but in the opposite way. In a sense I am going against the grain. I do not really like to text because it is time consuming as I am using a basic flip phone and old school texting. I am trying to listen to see if I have hit a button the right number of times to choose a letter. I have sent some pretty bizarre text messages. And slowly, I might add.
I do not have the time to read what is going on in the Facebook world. I don’t have a smart phone because I cannot see one, so I also do not have access to the web at my fingertips. And I love it. Reducing the flood of information has made my life easier. At the same time, my visual impairment has also forced me to pick up the phone and talk to people more. My preference and primary form of communication is through conversation. As I have moved more to phone and face-to-face conversations I find that sometimes it takes a while to get people conditioned to calling me back instead of trying to communicate via texting. It is also interesting that people who know I am visually impaired still send text messages. The first time someone does it I send back a text that says, “Dumb ass, you just texted a blind person,” and then they are somewhat confused. Some do eventually start picking up the phone to communicate. Others are even willing to grab coffee or lunch or just stop by and hang out.
At first I thought that not having the ability or time to text and e-mail and use social media left me in the cold. But, actually the opposite has occurred. If I care enough about you to want to know you or know what is going on in your world I, eventually, will pick up the phone. Because of this I not only know who my friends are, but my friendships have deepened because I am really connecting with people. On the other side of that when I get overwhelmed I tend to drop off the grid and can do it easily. Those who use text or e-mail as a primary means of communication in building or maintaining relationships must be at a loss in really being able to connect.
At the same time the visual impairment has made me feel more disconnected in my broader social interactions. I mean not being able to see people’s faces or heads has consequences. It has left me unable to read people because I can’t see facial expressions. It means I get no feedback about how people are reacting to what I say or if they are even making eye contact and attending. I can’t read if people are being sincere or authentic or sarcastic because that is often shown in the face and not in the tone of voice. I do not know when someone is looking at me or gesturing from a distance. It has made me aware of how much communication is done via eye contact and nods or other small gestures and signs in the face, all of which I can no longer see. If I am with someone and meet or see a person I have to rely on the friend to describe a reaction, or tell me if someone was looking at me or seemed engaged or even annoyed (I do have a somewhat sarcastic sense of humor).
As a psychologist, I fully understand the importance of reading people through facial expressions and the importance of searching someone’s eyes. They say the eyes are the window to the soul, so I have wondered, am I missing seeing the essence of who people are?
I think the inability to see facial expression hurts me in social interaction, facilitation and especially in trying to meet new people. Not being able to read cues and respond in turn – these can be interpreted by those who do not know that I am impaired as rudeness or aloofness. And they may no longer want to engage. I wish I could hold someone’s gaze and understand what they are feeling.
And I am not sure how to get around it. My heightened sense of hearing and other senses don’t really assist me in this task. My strategy now is to just smile a lot and seem approachable and listen as much as I can to tone and inflection of the voice. And I also use my brain’s new ability to try and fill in the gaps in faces. But I am missing so much.
Being in social settings, in crowds in public places and even at parties, I feel a sense of disconnection because I can't really recognize people or engage them. It makes me more of an observer. It is like I am not really in the scene, but watching a movie and that movie is film noire. I am there but not all there.
I once wrote a song and only one song that addressed my visual impairment. There is a line in it that says, “In between the light and darkness, distortion and detail is where I see and it makes things seem not so real.” And that is the easiest way I can put it. It is verisimilitude, partly illusion, not all there. And that way I am less engaged or chose to put more energy into truly being engaged and faking it. And whether I am up to that task depends on the people, the setting, and my mood and energy that day. But overall it is one of the biggest losses and one in which it is difficult to adjust.
My inability to see people’s faces and what it costs me makes we think about what we all lose now because face to face interactions or even phone dialogue is not the norm in how we communicate and connect with people. I wonder, in this new age of communication where we are disconnected, if we are not teaching our kids how to have a conversation, then we are also not teaching them how to read non-verbal behavior or read facial expression. How can you read people if you can’t see them or even if you are with them you are looking down at your phone? I saw a TED lecture and read a book on how we are becoming more disconnected because of social media and texting and how younger people do not know how to have a conversation. The loss of the ability to have conversations and all that it entails will create a society that is just about being heard or people knowing what you are doing -- instead of knowing each other. And that is a sad thing. I can’t imagine choosing to have relationships that way. I know my struggle, my sense of really wanting to see people and hear people and even touch them in order to feel more connected and how the loss of it affects me. To me interacting via text and e-mail and social media is kind of like being visually impaired because of all that is lost. And why someone would choose that is baffling to me.
