Lucas Murray is a boy with an extraordinary skill.
Although Lucas, from Poole in Dorset, is completely blind, he can throw a basketball accurately into a hoop, he can walk around his street and he can even identify what objects are made of without touching them.
What’s more, he’ll never need to use a guide dog.
Lucas’s extraordinary ability to see without eyes was taught to him by Californian Daniel Kish, 43, founder of the charity World Access for the Blind.
By making sharp clicks with his mouth and listening for the echo, Lucas is able to build a mental map of his world. If the click takes longer to come back, then the object it’s bouncing off is further away. If the object is hard, it makes a different echo to one that’s soft and if something is moving away from him, the echo comes back lower than if it is moving towards him.
The skill that Lucas has developed shows that an attitude, an expectation and lateral thinking can truly make you free.
Indeed Lucas’s teacher, Daniel Kish, who also “sees” with echoes turns the whole idea of a blind person’s “disability” on its head:
“Our emphasis is in how the blind can help the world … Blind people who are able to step up to the plate choose how and what they want to achieve. They’ve developed themselves into something. They’ve developed the world around them into something. That is a process that is applicable to everyone.”
For people like Lucas and Daniel, disability or empowerment are all a state of mind.
When we are faced with things that seem hard to do, their examples are ones we all can learn from.
It’s all about figuring out how to things that at first seem … impossible!
Bye for now!
Bernardo Moya, CEO
The Best You
PS. Please share If this has inspired you or could inspire others.