Like many others struggling with vision loss, I was resistant to joining a network of blind peers. Suffice it to say, while I'd adopted these behaviors, I wasn't exactly that good at being sighted either.

For those of us with limited sight, we have a choice as to our initial approach to our new selves. We can both be vain and disguise our disability, or we can show the world who we are. I chose the latter; although, often enough, the vision that I still had, caused me to forget that I had any vision loss.

During one of my trips to Italy, I fell from a six-foot drop, off the side of the great Pantheon's entrance, because I was so transfixed by its towering columns. Today when I travel, I do it much more safely. And now that I am more blind than ever before, I very occasionally feel -when I go to the aquarium, or attend fire works displays- that I am a fool for putting myself into experiences designed for the sighted. In other words, it's like feeling that the world wasn't made for people like me. However, thanks to the wisdom of Dr. Kenneth Jernigan, those feelings quickly succumb to the power of good sense.

My vision loss does not necessarily limit me, but it characterizes me as a young person is characterized by youth, or as a black person is characterized by the color of his skin. Are skin color and age prerequisites for intelligence? If the folks with commercial interests in the Genome project have their way, who knows what qualitative differences among us might be perceived as expendable. Thanks to Dr. Jernigan, in large part, I would prefer to remain blind, thank you very much.

The former president of the NFB made the following statement. "We do not compete against what we might have been, but only against other people as they are." Compare a sighted person with an average intellect to a blind person with a superior mind. Then let's say all their other characteristics are equal. Mind you that would be an impossibility, but let's just say. Which of the two then is more limited? It would depend on what you want them to do. Put the blind guy into a serious game of basketball and you'll most likely regret it. If you are looking for a good history or science teacher, or a good accountant, then the sighted individual with mild intelligence would find himself in the dark.

How is it that I accept my blindness so absolutely? If I had known back in art school, what I know now, I believe my journey from adequate to poor vision -which coincided with my journey from secondary adolescence into adulthood- would have been a great deal less difficult. I'm sure you're all acquainted with the terms: It's all in the mind, or mind over matter.

Dr. Jernigan said that there is a tendency among us to perceive encroaching blindness as a sort of ensuing death. For me, it is a rebirth, a re-vitalization. It is assumed that because my retinas are dying, that the visual cortex of my brain is dying as well. I believe that, in fact, my visual cortex is being freed up to perform other functions. These include everything from information conception, perception and interpretation to memory capacity and speedy inter-synaptic response. If my brain was a ten-gigabyte disk drive, the increasing lack of visual capability equals out to an optimization, causing the freeing up of an extra four gigabytes of thought processing space.

Consider the fact that individuals who have been blind since birth stimulate the visual cortex when they read Braille. Consider the existence of a child who -after having been born with a life threatening mass of blood on the left hemisphere of his brain- made it through several brain surgeries. Today, thanks to the fact that enough left brain cells migrated to the right, through out those operations during his childhood, he has maintained a B average in mathematics as well as literature with just half a mind. He is a wonder. We are wonders.

Never before have I ever had this much self-respect, clarity and vision.

For more information, E-mail us at: info@nfbct.org