Aphantasia: 'My mind's eye is blind'
This has been nagging me for weeks since I &#x27;discovered&#x27; that almost everyone around me can visualize things in their mind. Frankly, it helps explain a lot about my life. The inability to picture the face of friends, family, places I&#x27;ve visited, all contribute to a sense of isolation and distance that I feel daily. My strong preference for non-fiction, too, is likely an artifact of reading fiction word by word but &#x27;seeing&#x27; nothing interesting. My failed attempts at all sort sorts of meditation and mindfulness exercises are also now suspect. The anecdotes about being unable to understand the concept of &#x27;counting sheep&#x27; also resonate strongly with me. That face-blindness is also commonly co-morbid also helps me understand that aspect of myself better.<p>All in all, while I don&#x27;t feel &#x27;robbed&#x27; of this ability to visualize things, it does seem to lob off a chunk of things which are particularly joyful to the human experience. I can&#x27;t really visualize a future life for myself, let alone my current life. To discover all of this after decades of being alive is quite mind-blowing, and I&#x27;m glad it&#x27;s getting the wave of media attention that it is now (or else I would not have known).<p>But then, perhaps, in this case, ignorance would be a bit more blissful.