What vision loss helped Andrew Leland gain

How to Be a Better Human

TED

Self-improvement, Education

4.2 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 September 2023

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When he was a teenager, Andrew Leland was diagnosed with a condition that causes a gradual loss of vision. Over the years, Andrew’s literal view of the world has narrowed – but the ways in which he can explore and embrace life have widened. In this episode, Andrew talks about what his transition into blindness has taught him about life and how to navigate change. He also shares enlightening and humorous insights into the culture of blindness and disability and reveals what we can learn about bringing joy and fun into our accessibility practices. Andrew is a writer, teacher, and audio producer. His first book, “The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight” is out now. For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts

Transcript

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0:00.0	Ted Audio Collective. human. I'm your host Chris Duffy. When I was growing up my dad often said that the best
0:15.1	advice he'd ever gotten was that life is mess management. At first I thought that
0:19.7	he meant that literally. My younger brother and I created no shortage of literal messes for him to manage. I mean, one time, I had a friend over and we decided we were going to make it a blizzard inside, so we took all of the tissues out of a tissue box and shredded them into the air.
0:33.7	It was a beautiful winter wonderland until my parents walked in and then we were in big trouble.
0:39.2	Okay but as I've gotten older, I understand now that mess management isn't always literal.
0:45.1	Things happen in our lives unexpectedly. Messes happen.
0:48.9	Life does not go according to plan, and we have to figure out how to manage that.
0:52.3	How do we adjust to it?
0:53.8	Today's guest Andrew Leeland is a writer and an audio producer who has done a lot of
0:58.4	deep thinking about transitions and life adjustments. Andrew has been slowly losing his eyesight for years.
1:05.1	He's had to figure out how that re-orient his relationship to the world, to his friends, to his
1:09.6	family, to his work. And I really love how Andrew talks about this stuff in a nuanced way.
1:16.4	He's not afraid to live with and to accept some uncertainty. Whatever your current
1:21.5	relationship to ability and disability is I think that you're going to find a lot to relate to and to learn from in how Andrew thinks about this stuff and how he approaches the world.
1:31.0	I know that I definitely did. Here's a clip of Andrew
1:34.1	explaining his current situation. Right now I have central vision but I'm seeing
1:38.6	the world through a pretty narrow porthole so even though I can see these pairs and that hippo I'm legally blind. I have severe
1:46.4	tunnel vision but it doesn't look like a tunnel because your brain adapts really
1:49.9	quickly to whatever you see like if the frame of the movie you're watching starts to
1:53.7	shrink to a much smaller size, at first you'll be annoyed. This sucks you might
1:58.0	say to yourself, I don't like watching this movie on this tiny screen. Then your
2:01.9	complaints will soften and disappear
	...

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