Dialogue in the Dark

I had a one-of-a-kind experience on the second day of the new year.

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𝐃𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐚𝐫𝐤

The daunting darkness descended on me without warning. It despised the streak of adventure I had thought was in me, rudely pushing me out of my comfort zone. Everything in my brain screamed “I want out! Walk out now!” Yet the walking stick and my legs carried me forward, into absolute darkness, into aha! discovery and into amazing depths of dialogues with my own heart.

Upon a friend’s invitation, this morning, together with two friends, I embarked on a fascinatingly fearful and fearfully fascinating experience to walk in complete darkness for exactly an hour.

Dialogue in the Dark is an experience guided by blind guides in total darkness.

I was supposed to enjoy “a walk in the park” where the guide led us to sit on a bench, smell flowers and hear birds chirping but I was listening to the dialogue in my heart - please just let me walk through this as quickly as possible, I can do without the fragrant flowers and the sound of birds.

I was able to respond to the guide’s questions in my usual sanguine manner but I promise you I thought I was going to lose it anytime. Feeling the letters SIR on the wall panel distracted me a short while, touching Sir Stamford Raffles’ shoe did not bring any relief. I was constantly confronted by the darkness I was in.

My friend’s voices did not help. My legs moved forward and we came to a blind man’s house. The guide passed me a braille book, a special rubric cube and an ukulele and I psyched myself to sound enthusiastic as I described what my hands touched but the tension in my heart never went away. Even a spontaneous tune on the ukulele by the guide failed to remove the stress in my heart. Then we ‘watched’ a movie - through an audio tape describing vividly the scenes.

We walked the kitchen, we walked into the supermarket, we walked along the HDB corridor and we crossed a road. These were meant to help us ‘engage in order to empathise. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t empathise.

The walk ended at a cafe where I ordered green tea and oreo biscuits. At the sofa where we sat, I finally found my tipping point. After 50 minutes in the darkness, I sensed my heart relax. I enjoyed my green tea in the darkness, knowing that my journey was about to end.

My insights? An ouch! self discovery - when driven into unfamiliar, uncomfortable zones, I just want to walk through it as quickly as I can. I do not know how to enjoy the process and hence I may not have learnt to see in the dark. Ouch. A dialogue in the dark exposes a dialogue in my heart.

A saving grace is I’m likely to say yes to another opportunity to be pushed out of my comfort zone - and to live with the tension while enjoying the process. Profound.