Your Mind Creates Your Reality: What Isaac Lidsky Learned by Going Blind at Age 25 | Big Think

Your Mind Is So Powerful It Creates Your Reality: What Isaac Lidsky Learned by Going Blind at Age 25

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Isaac Lidsky says losing his sight by the age of 25 has been the true gift of his life. Why? It showed him the most profound of all truths about being a human being. If Isaac Lidsky had not gone blind by the age of 25, would he have graduated from Harvard Law School magna cum laude, or clerked for two Supreme Court Justices, or created a technology company worth hundreds of millions of dollars? It is impossible to say. But it is difficult to imagine his life being any better with the supposed gift of sight. Indeed Lidsky says losing his sight was the true gift he received in life. Why? Because it showed him how literally everyone creates their own reality — even seeing the world, says Lidsky, is an act of creation. Once you learn that reality is yours to create, you will only want to create a better one for yourself.

This video is part of a collaborative series with the Hope & Optimism initiative, which supports interdisciplinary academic research into significant questions that remain under-explored. The three-year initiative will provide over $2 million for philosophers, philosophers of religion, and social scientists to generate original, high-quality, collaborative research on topics related to optimism and hopefulness. Discover the public components of the Hope & Optimism project, and how you can contribute, at hopeoptimism.com.

Isaac Lidsky is the author of Eyes Wide Open: Overcoming Obstacles and Recognizing Opportunities in a World That Can't See Clearly

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ISAAC LIDSKY:

Isaac Lidsky grew up in Miami, Florida and began his career playing Weisel Weizel on Season One of Saved By the Bell: The New Class. He graduated from Harvard at 19 with an honors degree in mathematics and computer science, then later graduated from Harvard Law School magna cum laude. As a U.S. Justice Department lawyer, Lidsky argued more than a dozen appeals in federal court on behalf of the United States and never lost a case.

After applying 37 times for a Supreme Court clerkship, received an offer from retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor for a clerkship for the 2008-2009 term—becoming one of the elite few selected each year and the only blind clerk to serve in the history of the Court. He was also detailed to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

He founded a nonprofit organization to fund the development of treatments for blinding diseases and within 5 years grew it to a dozen cities nationwide and more than $5 million. The technology company he founded sold for $230 million.Perhaps most striking, Lidsky is only 37, and he is blind. Born with Retinitis Pigmentosa, a rare degenerative disease of the retina, from age 12 to 25 he slowly lost his sight. He is the author of Eyes Wide Open.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Isaac Lidsky: I lost my site progressively over time; my photoreceptor cells of my retina kind of ceased to function.

So if you picture like a Jumbotron screen at an arena, and imagine the bulbs on that screen kind of slowly and randomly break over time, that's what happened to me. So at first maybe you don't even notice it, then maybe a gets a little annoying. Eventually you have some issues sort of making out the image.

For me sight became this sort of bizarre experience where objects would appear and then morph into other objects and then disappear, kind of depending on what information I had or what kind of clues I had. It was this conscious, arduous process to see.

What was amazing is, given that experience, I literally saw firsthand how powerful our minds are to create the reality we experience, to create this immersive experience of sight, for example, which I always thought was objective and true and not much to it.

But I saw that that's not the case at all right, sight is this unique personal virtual experience that our minds create. So that was sort of the profound insight for me in terms of how I went blind. That was then really a gift in my life in many other ways, because I realized that all of us really shape our reality, shape our experience of the world in all sorts of ways that we're not necessarily so aware of.

For me recognizing this power, our ultimate power, understanding it, embracing it, committing to it 1000 percent is an endless source of hope and optimism.

Your life is not happening to you, you are creating it, and that's liberating. It's yours to make of it what you want.

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