Life is all about learning’s and putting those learning’s into practice which will improvise our life is my philosophy. But few days back some thing happened which put me into thought process and I started to question my self how tough is to relearn every aspect of life.
Relearning…..I thought to my self, I never thought I will have to relearn every aspect of my day to day activities if I get my vision back. One of my friend at Enable India told me that there are some born blind people whom he met wish to be blind through out their life. I was surprised when he told me this…why would anyone will not wish to see this beautiful world I asked him? He replied they need to relearn each and every aspect of their life starting from scratch again. This is something interesting I thought to myself…
I told him that we never knew anything by birth and we all learned during the journey of life. But I never knew that relearning is so tough for some people and they wish things to be same like before. I told my friend they are not willing to relearn because they fear the change. Yes change is some thing which will fear us and change is something which will make our life much easier. I never knew anything about screen reader and I used a screen magnification to use computers for 2yrs and one day there was a need for me to learn how to use a screen reader and I did it. But today I fear to learn another kind of screen reader or use open source screen readers, only because I am comfortable with the current one and it is serving all my needs. What if tomorrow there is a need for me to relearn the same concepts of using a screen reader using an open source one. I fear that change, but after I start using I don’t fear it.
But I still don’t understand what the real difference between learning and relearning is. I do things differently in life as my vision limits me to do couple things like a non person with disability. But if I get my vision back I will have to just learn how others are doing the same work and replicate it. I find this easier, but this might be very tough too. I need to do a research and find out with all my friends whom I know in the world of disability will post my results here soon and please do share any views on this in the comments section…
That’s a really interesting post Raghava.
Personally, I feel that you could a small survey among your friends who are differently abled; that might bring some perspective on their way of thinking or the hypothetical problems that need to be solved.
Secondly, relearning is part of the process. But, the main thing that you’re missing here is “Unlearning”. Unlearning, in my experience requires a lot more effort, understanding, and the way we presume things to be.
If a blind person gets his vision back, he would have to stop hearing things in a way and start looking through his eyes; create visual patterns that he can associate with his memory that previously used to contain mostly sounds and the feel of physical materials. This association would require unlearning since he would’ve assumed something else and relearn what he once assumed to be.
He would have to unlearn braille and associate braille patterns with visual representation of letters or numbers. This takes significant time, pressure and probably fear of not being able to learn completely.
The above mentioned are just my hypotheses, but, I’d love to see your theory at work. Talk with a people who gained vision and their initial steps that they took. It would be really helpful.
Ajan you are true with your hypotheses & there is no need to ask for a survey. i can feel it now & it’s painful to unlearn, trust me & relearning is art in it’s own way. But when i ask my friends they said we do it without realizing & sometimes it’s frustrating to go through all this process. Just curious is there any research done on this? if not i would like to do it.