Trust Experiment: Going Blind
Short: Read about my first post in a series about trust experiments. Walking through Berlin traffic with my eyes closed.
Point Of View: You are getting lead through Berlin with your eyes closed.
As I sat with my partner, eating in a Berlin city mall food court, I wondered, what I was going to write about today. (This is a not-too-uncommon occurance on Wednesday afternoons) - The last few days had been quite packed and left me for little time to think about a topic and let my thoughts aggregate, but there was nothing too pressing I felt like sharign either, and the lack of sleep did not help much either, RATHER THAN GIVING ME HURTING EYES!
Wow, just closing my eyes, as my partner was at one of the stands stashing her dish tray had felt sooo nice. What if I just didn’t open my eyes for a longer time? When she came back — being lovingly used to my antics — she offered that I could leave the eyes closed. And when we wanted to head of to quicky run an errand at my office, I asked if she would like to guide me. I had found something that I wanted to write about: a trust experiment!
Me living in Berlin does have its upsides. One of these is that I do not mind walking round with my eyes closed, being led by the hand. Navigating the food court did take a while; leading me to leaern the biggest learning from this experiment: Walking anywhere with your eyes closed will have you walking super slowly, while thinking you are walking too fast :D
The second biggest learning (which, admittedly was not surpsing) was; just how attentive yo can get to sounds. One of the bigger challanges of walking through the food court, for me, was the over-head mounted loud speakers playing music. They were far more disorienting than I thought, completely negating my sense of space and relation. When I was walking on the sidewalk this sense of space and orientation was far better. But by the time we had left the shopping mall the food court was housed in, my partner and I were more familiar with the experiment as well.
She had started giving me information about the density of (pedestrian) traffic in our vicinity. She also had adapted her way of leading me slightly (more strict when we were at key locations and more lax when we had more space and were in between key locations - which also let me take up pace when she was more lax, knowing there was no threat).
Another thing I noticed was, that the constant threat of having people run into me, had made me no longer brace for impact anymore. When initially I was apprehensive and had my hands up in front of me, I had accepted the risk but learned the threat wasn’t as high either.
When we had left the mall, we had also entered a path which I frequent almost every working day. So I also had felt more at home there and the different types of stone, pavement and cobble stone that we walked on gave me sense of space and direction. Also the way I could feel (or not feel) the low standing sun, made me aware of where I was, as i could gauge the scy scrapers around the Berlin Zoo that would be blocking (or allowing for) the sun hitting me.
One crucial part was left for the journey to my office. We needed to cross the road at a spot with no traffic lights for pedestrians. By now I trusted my partner a lot more, but when she said, we could cross I walked extra briskly, not to dilly-dally and cross too slow. Still, when we had crossed, it felt as if a car sped past, just behind me where I had just walked. Which did scare me quite a bit - even though my partner assured me that we were well past.
A few steps later, we had reached the entrance to my office and I decided to stop the experiment. Being quite blinded for the first minute, I did feel reliefed and greatful to be able to see (again).
I am frequently surprised how much small experiments like these can change perspective; give new ideas; or bring new aspects of old experiences into view. As such I hope posts like these can encourage you to try similar experiments while staying (reasonably) safe.
Thanks to my brilliant partner who is putting up with my joyous weirdness - and thank you for reading <3 stay beautiful!
P.S.: I wrote just about everything here while I had my eyes closed. So if there are any typos, thats why. Longer-time readers are familiar with these kinds of posts — welcome to the newcomers
