Feature

My Most Precious Gift

Mushfique Amin Mallick

It is amazing how complicated life seems when you have a dark future ahead of you. Few things seem simple. I was sitting on the emerald green grass in my garden. I walked the distance to the pond and saw my reflection staring back at me in the crystal clear water. I realized that in a short time, not that I would be able to see anything at all. And as I sat there, the truth hit me. The corners of my eyes burned as Tears from my eyes caused ripples in the surface of the water, feeling as though I had just been told I was going to die soon, and resigned to my fate, to make the best of the time left.

I always took for granted everything that was handed to me and yearned for more, as anyone would. I wanted to see a World Cup match- football, of course, being my preference, view the seven wonders of the ancient world, and perhaps someday catch a glimpse of our blue planet from space. I always told myself that I had my whole life ahead of you to see these things and visit those places. Now my life seems to be concluded in a few days, after which my vision would leave me forever in a dark abyss. It was as if god decided to play a cruel trick on me with disastrous consequences. Spending my time with my family and friends seemed like a drawn out conclusion for me.

As I sat there thinking about all this, some of the shock subsided. It would not be a happy ending to my life, when it comes. I would have missed out on a lot of things in this world. Blind people are always treated as a liability everywhere. Often they gain other people's sympathy, but they are just hollow words. Blind people have to work hard for everything that normal people would have called 'simple'. They are sometimes treated as outcasts in society, often disregarded, making their challenged life even more difficult, and denying them the opportunity to help others and making this world a better place to live in. I would call such cruel and heartless people blind themselves, as they cannot see beyond what is in front of their very own eyes. Our sight was a gift to us by a god, and we must use this gift to understand god's other gifts to us.