by Susan Kitazawa

Author's note: I've written this in belated response to Jeff Thom's call for articles "about those parts of your life that have nothing to do with CCB".

There are lots of reasons not to do things. It's too hot out. It's too windy and cold. Everyone else will be younger. You don't have the money. I'm not
sure how to get there. Paratransit is always late. No one else is going, at least no one we know. It's too hard. I don't have time.

But we likely only get one life here, and it might as well be fun and interesting. The world, despite all its problems and challenges is a deeply rich
and interesting place. And we lucked out and are here in it.

Two years ago my friend Cristina, legally blind and in her 90s, called to tell me that she had just joined a choir for seniors. No auditions, no try-outs.
After some pep talking, she got me to commit to joining. At the end of the call, she mentioned that, by the way, the choir sings in Spanish. When I said
I wasn't so sure about this, she told me that this would be a great opportunity for me to practice singing and to improve my rusty Spanish all at the same
time. And for free!

When I went to the first class, it turned out that there was another blind woman who had already been in the group for a while. A year later, I invited
another blind friend to join the choir. So there are four of us blind ones among the forty members of Coro Solera.

In spite of sometimes singing Spanish words that I don't entirely understand, this has turned out to be a fun and deeply enriching experience. As Cristina
promised, both of the choir leaders are delightful and very quick to accommodate not only our blind and low vision needs but an assortment of other disabilities
among this group, all age 60 or older. There are several singers who didn't know any Spanish at all when they joined. Sighted and blind, we're all learning
a lot together.

Being out in the wider world, we blind ones have successfully educated our fellow choir members about ways to best help us. They've also come to understand
when we'd prefer to do things in our own sometimes "slow vision" manner without their assistance. A few choir members have asked about resources and suggestions
for living with their own or friends' increasing vision loss.

When our choir sings at street fairs, senior centers, and concert halls, people see us with our white canes as we participate fully in a community activity
out in the wider, mostly sighted world. Best of all, we have a lot of fun, meet new people, and have a chance to give back to the larger community.

More recently, as participants in a writers' project, another blind woman and I happened to both be part of a literary reading at the main library in San
Francisco. Standing before an audience of about 100 people, she read her work in braille. I read mine in very large print, the pages a few inches from
my face. (Yes, I'm gradually getting faster at braille reading, a new challenge taken on in my 60s.)

Sighted audience members not only saw us, with our white canes, there at the podium, reading our work, they heard us read about life experiences beyond
our being part of the blind community. They had a chance to know us as people defined by more than just our blindness.

As I make my daily treks around and about San Francisco, I often go for several days without seeing anyone else with a white cane or a dog guide, unless
I'm within a few blocks of the LightHouse for the Blind or at a blind event. I know that there are lots of blind and low vision folks here in the Bay Area.

Having had so much fun singing in Coro Solera and being part of the writers' project, I want to encourage more of my blind friends to get out and live
in the wider world. It can be very comforting to be among our blind and low vision friends. They don't need explanations; they already get it. At the same
time, it's exciting to be part of so many varied activities even when I'm the only legally blind participant. Sure, sometimes it's pretty daunting or frustrating.
But it's worth it.

I recently heard an interesting question: "What would you do if you weren't afraid?" A bit of healthy fear is a good thing; otherwise we might try to do
something with predictably disastrous consequences. But some fears keep us from living the full life we can really have. I've been giving this question
some creative thought.

This month or today or next week, it might be fun to stretch the limits a bit. Go somewhere new. Change something in your daily routine. Take harmonica
lessons. Try out whatever it is that you'd really like to do.

It can be scary trying new things especially if we think we have to go it alone. But we don't. I don't think I ever heard people talk about independence
as much as I have since I became part of the blind community. Maybe it's a part of my Japanese American cultural and genetic heritage, but I think that
independence is a bit over-rated. (In Japanese, the word for we and the word for I are the same word.) We're actually all part of an interdependent whole.
Most of us don't make our own clothes, grow our own food, take our own trash to the dump, or do our own dental work. We count on each other to get things
done.

I find it much easier to step out of my comfort zone when I remind myself that independence is somewhat of an illusion. I remind myself that I'm already
dependent on others for most of the important things in my life, like clean drinking water and the covers I sleep under at night. When I remember this,
I find it much easier to ask for help.

If I try a new city bus line and get lost, even after carefully researching my route ahead of time, I cheerfully ask someone where I am and what I need
to do next to get where I'm going. If I can't read the sign or didn't even know that there was one, I ask politely, for someone to explain what steps I
need to carry out whatever it is I'm hoping to do, like getting in line to buy a ticket. Eventually I make it to the right place.

Yes, it's often confusing and sometimes exhausting just getting from Point A to Point B. At times it doesn't seem worth the effort. Some days it's necessary
to stay home, shelter in place, and gather up energy to face it all again. When getting about is just too tough, there are all the ways we can bring the
world into our own living space, be it audio books, classes by mail, dancing in our kitchen to radio tunes, online courses, or having a friend come by
to teach us how our much too complicated phone works.

I hope that reading this will nudge someone along toward trying something new. And I hope that when we need a nudge, you'll remind me and others to enjoy
all there is to explore in this world of ours. We'd miss much too much if we made sheltering in place a way of life. In the past, families sometimes hid
blind family members away. We shouldn't be hiding ourselves from the world due to our own fear or our own inertia. And it's much less scary to be out there
when we remember that it's absolutely fine to pleasantly ask someone else for help. We all have our part in helping each other get through life so we can
fully enjoy ourselves in this wide world of ours.