When correction matters more than blame

Silence can teach, if we stay with it long enough...without blaming ourselves for the failure!

Every morning, without fail, I go through the same steps: hands to keyboard, press the power button, and then… I listen, hoping to hear that familiar voice. It is almost a superstition by now.
I place my hands on the keyboard, press the power button, and wait for the familiar voice to greet me.

Most days, it does.

But once in a while, there is nothing. Just silence—so thick it feels like someone else walked in and sat down.

On those mornings, there is no panic, no drama.
Just a quiet, heavy question that every blind person knows far too well:

Is it me, or is it the machine?

Last week, I switched on my laptop, typed what I believed was the passcode, and waited.

Nothing.

No voice.
No cue.
No acknowledgement of my existence.

The room grew still, except for the steady hum of the ceiling fan and the faint warmth rising from the laptop.
My fingers hovered over the keys, unsure whether to try again or sit with the silence.

I tried again anyway.
Still nothing.

So I reached for the only reliable eyewitness I have ever had—my phone.

The smooth plastic felt cool in my palm. I opened Seeing AI, a free mobile app developed by Microsoft that reads text, identifies objects, describes scenes, and narrates the visual world through my phone camera. For blind and low vision users like me, it functions as an additional pair of eyes, reading whatever appears in front of the camera within seconds.

With the app open, I pointed the phone towards my silent laptop. There was a small vibration as the camera focused, the audio channel awakening like a patient teacher preparing to deliver the truth.

The verdict came quickly:

“Wrong passcode. OK button.”

There it was.
Not a spiritual message.
Not karma.
Just me, getting the password wrong. I can almost hear my old computer teacher sighing.

And my emotional reaction surprised me.

I had to laugh at myself—what else could I do?
That messy combination of relief, mild embarrassment, and the universal instinct to blame the machine before blaming ourselves. I had been preparing for a full technical meltdown, when all I needed was a more accurate finger.

The moment stayed with me long after the laptop finally decided to speak, because that tiny everyday incident revealed something much larger.

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The Oldest Script: Blame

People have often asked me questions like, “What sin did you commit to be born blind?”

When I was a kid, those questions stung. I remember lying awake at night, wondering if something about me was broken, or if I was just missing the answer everyone else seemed to know.

Worse, they made me believe that other people held the answers to the questions I was still learning to ask.

I grew up thinking I had to chase other people’s definitions of success.
If someone believed I should sing on a stage because that was a “blind person’s thing”, I felt compelled to try. There is absolutely nothing wrong with singing or performing, but those were not the dreams written into my life. They were the dreams others handed to me because they assumed they had the right to choose on my behalf.

The world often assumes that a person with disability needs guidance more than choice, moulding him into an idea that never fits his ambitions.

Over time, I began to recognise the pattern.

The assumption is disarmingly simple:

Disability equals sin.
Sin equals punishment.
And punishment must have a reason.

It is a tidy theory if you never test it.

But life keeps testing it in the smallest, most mundane moments.

Like a password that fails.
Like a screen that refuses to speak.
Like a phone that steps in to read the verdict.
Like every situation where it appears, from the outside, that a blind person is trapped by limitation.

But here is the part many do not see:
Nature, the universe—whatever word you prefer—has an odd way of pushing me out of comfort zones that others assume I must be trapped in. It never allows me to settle into monotony. It forces me to seek alternatives, fresh methods, and new solutions.

Now, I also know that I am not callous or cruel enough to hurt anyone -something that is ‘sin’ in my definition. And if disability is making me mentally sharper, work hard to understand the immediate environment that is harder to perceive without eyes; If life makes me work hard to win my rewards, how can I treat this to be sin?

So if my passcode does not work, well, time to improvise. That is just part of the deal.

And each time, the lesson leaves a trace.

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The Part Where Technology Becomes Agency

This is also where tools like Seeing AI transform things for those like me.

They are not merely applications.
They are extensions of independence.

Seeing AI reads short text as soon as it appears, guides me while scanning documents, identifies products through barcodes, recognises people I have saved within the app, describes scenes, detects light, identifies colours, and even reads handwriting in supported languages. On iOS, it can use spatial audio to help me understand unfamiliar spaces. I can share photos from WhatsApp or Mail and have them described instantly.

For many sighted people, these features sound impressive, perhaps even clever.

For me, they are the difference between waiting for help and solving a problem independently.
Between depending on someone else’s interpretation and trusting my own.
Between feeling boxed in and feeling capable.

When technology is actually built with people like me in mind, it is not about saving anyone. It is just about letting us get on with things, our way.

And that is not charity.
That is agency.

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The Part Where the Story Finds Its Shape

There is a rhythm to these moments—the ones where the world does not respond the way you expect.

They rarely announce themselves with drama.
They sit quietly in the background, like the hum of a ceiling fan, waiting for you to pay attention.

In those moments, the path ahead is never straight.
It bends through frustration, through doubt, through the repeated act of reaching for another solution when the obvious one fails.

This is how people adapt.
This is how resilience forms—not through grand triumphs, but through small, persistent negotiations with a world that is not always built with you in mind.

Looking back, I know the story was never really about the wrong password. It was about how we all muddle through, finding new ways to keep going.

It was about the ways we discover ourselves in moments of inconvenience.
It was about how imperfection—mine, yours, the machine’s—is simply part of being human.

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Every person has what is usually described as ‘imperfection.’
Blindness happens to be mine, but I understand it differently so that it works as my greatest strength at the least expected moment. Blindness has not killed ingenuity. Nor does it rob me of the ability to imagine and to work with greater ease, save for those occasional glitches.
The facets of your own self that people might consider ‘imperfect’ may appear in ways only you can recognise, subtle patterns that shape how you move through the world. But maybe, when you carefully examine it in the introspective inner vision, it may provide you a more powerful fuel to energise you to live a fuller life.

Shadows dance where there is light.

They do not diminish the vigour of the flames, but tames their aggression to be gentle.

Those shadows are the things that connect us, not what divides us.

So the next time something in your life refuses to speak,
let the silence settle for a moment.
Let the questions form naturally.
And let the answers take their time.

They always do.

And in that pause, remember this:

Everyone deserves a shot at figuring things out for themselves—no guilt, no shame, and definitely no one else calling the shots.