A friend was recently telling my husband and me about his trip to Disney with his wife and daughter. He is in his late 40s, a fearful person, afraid of flying, cities and amusement park rides, among other things. We had heard that his family had somehow convinced him to go on Space Mountain and we asked him about it. He immediately complained about his neck and back still hurting him a week later from being jostled during the ride.
If you’re not familiar with the attraction, it is an inside roller coaster that is ridden in darkness. Our friend went on to elaborate what we already knew from having been passengers ourselves: because you can’t see what’s coming you don’t know how to prepare for it, how every inch forward is far more frightening than the typical outside version.
As he spoke, his description went right to my heart, alerting all my senses and insides that what he was describing is the same experience I have when walking or riding in a vehicle. Even if I know the path I am traveling by foot or the road being driven from when I had my full sight, it’s disorienting and often scary.
I am finding that now, almost five years into my own unexpected, abrupt and extreme change in the dark that what has happened to my vision is a metaphor for many aspects of life. In this instance, most of us have compared our own lives to that of a roller coaster ride, myself included even prior to the morning I opened my eyes to find them seemingly closed. Since then, though, with my own lights mostly out, I can claim Space Mountain as my own. But the anticipatory climb, the drops, the gentle curves and the sharp turns, the highs, the lows, sometimes the upside downs with your feet pointed to the sky, belong to all of us. Whether we realize it or not, we’re all ride people.
