I have gotten away, in recent months, from blogging the NYT Sunday "Modern Love" column.  But this week’s piece, "Seeing the World Through my Wife’s Eyes,"  by Ryan Knighton is just too good to ignore.

    Knighton is blind and he tells the story of his going blind (he was born sighted) and how he has come to depend on his wife for visual descriptions of the world around him.   It is a story of his acceptance of his condition, of his love for and dependence upon his wife, and of the paradoxes of blindness.

I would give anything to tell you what my wife looks like, but I
can’t. I haven’t seen her face in five years, and even my memory of her
is rapidly fading. Her expressions, body language, the shapely gait of
her walk, all of those things are dissolving in my mind as I move
further away from the visual world, and the memory of what it means to
see. Blindness is a troubling separation from my gal, and for her from
me.

The paradox stings, too. Always with me is a feeling that I
miss her, even though she’s here, in traces of smell, sound, taste and
texture. These hint at the pleasure of an image I used to know but
can’t have.

NOW, I bet I know what you’re thinking. Sure, I’m
acutely aware that I must delight in my other senses. In fact, sighted
people are almost always the ones reminding me to get with the program,
and to enjoy it. In so advising me, many of them subsequently become
lost in daydreams about a partner who really listens. You know, like a
blind guy might.

      It is a beautiful piece.  As I read, however, I found my mind wandering to the wife, Tracy.  She chose to marry him even though she knew he was going blind, and that his imminent loss of sight would shape their relationship and, ultimately, her life.  She obviously saw(!) more in him than his visual limitations.  And she chose to accept a particular role, supporting his heightened dependence, most likely believing that fulfilling that dependence would bring about her own self-realization.  And that is a beautiful thing.

     Although Knighton’s dependence on his wife may be a deeper, more profound dependence than for a couple of non-disabled people, the story is a reminder that all of us, regardless of our physical abilities, are in fact dependent on others for our social identities and our personal fulfillment.  The interdependence of Knighton and his wife are simply more obvious to behold, but they are unique not in kind but merely in appearance.  It is only when we accept our dependence on our social context, and work to carry out our duties within that context, that we can fully express and experience love.  That is a Confucian idea, and one that might get lost in our modern desire for individual freedom and autonomy and expression.

     There is a connection here to another story in yesterday’s NYT: "The Lonely American Just Got A Bit Lonelier."   It seems that sociologists have shown that our social circles are becoming smaller: there are, on average, fewer people that individual Americans are willing to confide in and draw into their most intimate lives:

….the Duke study suggested that a weakening of community connections is
in part responsible for increasing social isolation. More people are
working and commuting longer hours and have little time for the kinds
of external social activities that could lead to deeper relationships.

    The exigencies of modernity work against the comforts of sociality.   We need to embed ourselves in social dependencies to find love and support and identity, but our jobs, our desires, our culture all take us away from others and leave us with isolated selves.

     All is not so bleak, however (I am generally an optimist).  The sociologists have found that, while we may have fewer social relationships, the ones that survive, especially close family ties, might be enough to offset isolation (I say "might" because what happens if one’s closes family relations are not good, or even hurtful?)"

So the closest ties increasingly are limited to family members, in particular to spouses.

"That’s probably a result of the fact that men’s and women’s lives are
more structurally similar now than in 1985," Dr. Smith-Lovin said. It’s
more likely that both spouses are working at jobs that are important to
them, and men are more involved around the house. "Spouses literally
have more to talk about," she said.

Dr. Maier, for one, sees
that as cause for at least some optimism in a society whose fast pace
generally bodes badly for family life. "To hear that people are
investing more in their nuclear family is a positive thing," he said.

   Confucius would find reason to be happy here: he believes that we must cultivate our closest family ties and, then, work from that foundation outward to construct a rich and meaningful social existence.  And that is precisely what is happening with Knighton and his wife:

A REAL blind love, the literal kind, is a giving over of consciousness.
Today I let Tracy see for me. She makes us two who live more like one.
Much of my world only comes through what she chooses to describe and
illuminate with words. Because of that I am no longer only attracted to
her appearance, but the appearance she gives to the rest of the world.

    Sounds to me like what Confucius would call "the root of humanity."