The Blind Man's Vision

Everyone has stereotypes. The lazy American. The stern German. The pretentious Brit. The rude Frenchman. The loud, lazy, hairy Spaniard who can’t give directions to save his life. Of course these are huge generalizations, maybe occasionally helpful for traveling to one of these countries and understanding the social atmosphere, but more often than not, they are very inaccurate and unreliable at predicting the character of a particular individual. Except maybe the bad directions part.

Its true. Spaniards really can not give good directions. You ask somewhere where la plaza is, they say go left. You end up more lost, ask another person, and they say go right. Finally you end up even farther from home. If its a really bad day you might stumble right on into Portugal without even knowing it. 

But this particular day wasn’t about giving reliable directions, but more about standing up and offering assistance. A blind man, traveling to the clinic for the blind right across from my building (thank goodness its for the blind and not for the deaf because I change in front of my window every morning), was struggling to get around one of those temporary fences they use to block construction areas. It was in the middle of the sidewalk, just placed there this morning, and thus was even tripping up people with their full visual faculties. Admittedly I tripped over it moments after this happened...

So he’s stammering along, feeling with his cane. He’s clearly confused, as I’m sure he walks this path often and has never encountered this strange object in his way. I opened my mouth to say ‘derrecha senor’, but someone had beaten me to it. The worker at a nearby store had left his post behind the cash register, leaving a long line of confused and frustrated shoppers, to help this man out. He told him ‘left! no, no, right! I meant right! right! keep going, okay now you can walk forward’. Not the worst directions I’ve ever seen a Spaniard give.

But it wasn’t the quality of the directions that mattered. It was that someone would so willingly leave their post to help someone else in need. So maybe these stereotypes have some kernels of truth to them. They must if they exist. While its important to remember they are unreliable and scarcely correct in explaining the character of an individual - perhaps what Spaniards lack in directional skills they make up for in social consciousness, and respect for elders and persons with disabilities. And then maybe the ‘lazy’ American, the ‘stern’ German, the ‘pretentious’ Brit, and even the ‘rude’ Frenchmen have equally redeeming qualities. Maybe you just need to open your eyes (or ears!), [and your mind] a little more to find those qualities.