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Stumbling Block or Stepping Stone

I am blind and hearing impaired. The blind depend on their ears and the deaf depend on their eyes. I can depend on neither but must discern the world through the clues I receive from each. You’d think I have every right to feel sorry for myself. Who on Earth could blame me? Hasn’t life given me a bum rap? Well, that’s one way of looking at it. But why should I exercise my right to be miserable? I look at it like this: if I go to bed miserable because I am blind, when I wake up in the morning I will still be blind, so what was the point of wasting all that energy feeling bad? If I still have to deal with disability one way or the other, I might as well enjoy the ride.

From a distance, I may see brick walls blocking every path. As I come closer, I see there is a door in each wall and stairs lead over the wall—not crystal stairs, but stairs nonetheless. There are shovels to dig under the walls and paths lead around the walls. But there is no way to the other side of that wall that does not require an effort on my part. Add to that the fact that I really don’t know what’s on the other side of the wall. I only know that I must get there and it’s on me to make the effort to do so.

To add to my troubles, I see a stumbling block in front of each wall. It's situated just where I can crack my head against the wall as I stumble. It takes no effort to stumble over a stumbling block. That’s why it’s called a stumbling block. But if it were meant to be a stumbling block, am I doing wrong to misuse it as a stepping stone? Perhaps I was meant to stumble. Perhaps I was meant to learn something that way. “Meant to?” By whom? Maybe I was meant to step up onto the block. After all, it is only my current perspective from the ground that makes it a stumbling block. Once I step up onto it, my perspective changes and it becomes a stepping stone and that is what it was meant to be. So over the wall I go.