Much of what we encounter in the world is not as it seems. But often, it takes a more extended, even painful time, until we realize this. But there are also, arriving like gifts, moments of life, and gifted people who do not have to wait that long for their enlightenment.
Jacques Lusseyran was such a gifted man. He went blind at the age of eight. But the moment he lost his sight, he made a life-changing discovery: inside, he found the light intact. «The light was there, accompanied by all visible forms, colors, and lines, endowed with the same power that it has in the world of eyes,» he recounts in his book ‹A New Seeing of the World› and with similar words also in his autobiography, ‹The Rediscovered Light›. So he calls himself happy: «Being blind is my greatest happiness! Being blind gives us great happiness and a real chance through the disorder and order it creates.» Jacques Lusseyran, who as a young resistance fighter was arrested by the Gestapo on July 20, 1943, less than 20 years old, and deported to Buchenwald, experiences the grace of simultaneous disorder and order in the stroke of the fate of blindness: «The disorder, that is the snap that hits you, the slight shift it causes: it forces us to see the world from another point. A necessary disorder!»
From Jean Claude Lin, The Be-All and End-All of Life – Of the Inwardly Becoming Human being. Stuttgart 2020.
Image Sofia Lismont – Translation: Monika Werner
