The Path to Creativity Part III: Art, Fear and Global Blindness

On an evening bike ride in the late summer, my thinking roams about, my limited night vision brings up thoughts and fears. I glide on a long smooth paved trail, north bound, floating through the air around me.  Then, hesitation, as I brake for a moment of consideration when I suspect something is in the path ahead; fear though, on these night rides, can render me unable to react at all.

 I recently learned of a Frenchman, Jacques Lusseyran, who was able to “see” through his fears in impressive ways.  A resistant fighter against the Nazi invasion as a young man in France, he survived some months in prison and another fifteen months in a German concentration camp.  He experienced the deaths of many friends and countrymen, all of the terror of that unimaginable time. Born in Paris in 1924, he became blind at the tender age of eight in a school accident. 

In his autobiography, And There was Light he says something surprising about his loss of sight, “blindness became for me a fascinating experience and the attempt to live in a new way.”  He speaks of his early years before the accident, as the “clear waters” of his childhood, a happy time when he was “always running.” Later, after he became blind he was able to see glimmers of light: 

"... there were times when the light faded, almost to the point of disappearing. It happened every time I was afraid.  If, instead of letting myself be carried along by confidence and throwing myself into things, I hesitated, calculated, thought about the wall, the half-open door, the key in the lock; if I said to myself that all things were hostile and about to strike or scratch, then without exception I hit or wounded myself. The only easy way to move around the house, the garden or the beach was not by thinking about it at all, or thinking as little as possible.  Then I moved between obstacles the way bats do.  Otherwise what the loss of my eyes had not accomplished was brought about by fear.  It made me blind."

Today I read that Exxon Mobil will be permitted to search for oil in part of the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia--a potential billion dollar financial arrangement with Russia.  The NY Times reports, “Once seen as a useless, ice-clogged backwater, the Kara Sea has become the focus of attention by oil companies in part because the sea ice appears to be receding, possibly because of global warming , easing exploration and drilling.” In the winter months when the Arctic regions are cloaked in darkness, imagine an oil spill clean-up operation like the one we witnessed in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010,  only on the icy albedo of the North Pole.  

Without answers to the issues at hand, men in suits shake hands.  Without eco-eyes on the future, agreements are made that may put the world further at risk, a risk like a holocaust. Are we being creative or careless with our resources, fearless or just plain greedy? I am thinking on this late summer night about Jacques Lusseyran and what he would say about our limited vision to move through the darkness of our time, our seeming inability to attempt to live in a new way.