I ask you to imagine a slightly different world. Not so different really.

Remember that ninety percent of human communication does not involve words, spoken or written. It is about tone of voice, facial expressions, body language and eye contact. We say a great many things without words, often even without realizing it. It isn’t an extra. It is the mainline of communication, the mainstream.

But in the world of this story, things are a bit different. Here ninety percent of human communication is telepathic. That’s all. People still speak and have facial expressions but perhaps they have developed to speak a bit less than we do. And the important communications—the things that truly matter—are passed directly from mind to mind.

In all other ways, this world is the same as ours. And as such, human bodies are fallible and changeable and diverse. The same diseases and injuries that affect us still exist in this telepathic world. Maybe it is a little less important if a person is blind or deaf because communication can go directly from mind to mind. Such disabilities still exist, but they become little more than a nuisance, like colorblindness or lack of the sense of smell is for people in our world.

The disease that people fear in this world, the dreaded debilitation that strikes some unlucky children, people with head injuries and the very old is called “mind blindness.” People donate teddy bears to mind-blind children, pity their parents and try not to think too hard about it.

These disabled people cannot communicate telepathically. Either fully or partially they cannot perceive or send such communication. And in a world of telepaths, this is a terrible condition.

But progress comes eventually. With technology and modernity there are steps toward acceptance. Those who were once kept hidden away in institutions are integrated… somewhat. Good-hearted people want to include and help them. The parents in the small town of Marten are even glad when the school integrates a smart mind-blind girl into a mainstream classroom.

Creative Commons image by Eric Wüstenhagen

Her name is Stacy. Stacy has wildly curly hair, a big smile and strangely disconnected-looking eyes. She doesn’t look at you when you greet her. You have to speak out loud. You have to be almost rudely explicit about everything with her. It takes extra effort and at first the teacher is reluctant to have this extra burden in her class.

But Stacy has a blocky little computer on her desk, something developed to be functional rather than handsome, to help the unfortunate who chronically have very little money. The computer roughly translates the stream of the teacher’s thoughts into words. It’s one big run-on sentence that often makes little sense. All the nuance and feeling is taken out, but she can basically understand what the teacher is trying to get across in class.

Stacy can’t perceive the comments and questions of other students with it though. The teacher wears a special receiver. It is so much better than nothing. Stacy is so happy to have it. Up until last year she was almost entirely cut off from the telepathic world and she had to go to a special school where slow-speaking teachers taught out loud and while everything was cheery, there was an underlying assumption that these children would always be disabled. The best they could hope for was “independent living skills.”

And Stacy is bright. Her teachers saw that and many people believe that with the right conditions and accommodations, she could achieve anything she sets her mind too. She is an excellent student after all, when the content is something she can hear or read.

Stacy has a special teacher too for after school. This special teacher tries to teach her coping skills, ways to get around her mind-blindness. She teachers Stacy how to read signs and cues from the bodies of others. She teaches Stacy to be extra kind and helpful to others, so that they will know that her mind-silence is not meant to be dismissive and cold, as it generally appears to others. Stacy works hard and earns stars on a chart for each milestone.

Because she’s a smiler and she tries so hard to please, some of the kids in her class invite her to go out with them. At first, it’s a thrill. They have the strange girl with them. They are curious about communication through words and gestures. Some kids like the feeling of approval from adults who are glad to see them include the disabled girl.

But it does take extra effort. And the kids find that the novelty wears off. After a while the effort of including her in communication gets old. Most stop inviting her. Sure, she smiles. Maybe a little too much, in fact. You have to say things so explicitly. She almost never gets the jokes. They don’t mean to be mean but…

There are a few who fiercely continue to invite Stacy along on group outings. She can dance so well. It’s almost as if she is saying something with the way she moves her body. But the truth is that when they have to choose a best friend to go on vacation with or someone to do a big school project with, it isn’t Stacy. She’s a friend, but not a best friend.

Sometimes Stacy does find a best friend, someone who she connects with. These are often troubled kids, teens who have been through abuse or who are shunned by the others. They don’t really want to share their every thought. They appreciate that she isn’t nosy and her out-loud chatter is a welcome distraction. But having friends who are outcasts has its own consequences.

When Stacy graduates from high school, she gets scholarships. She is still a very good student. With accommodations, she learns quickly and gobbles up knowledge. She is full of hope in those years and people point her out to their acquaintances as an “inspiration.”

“Don’t complain,” their thoughts flit from one to another as she walks by. “Think how hard it must be. If she can do it, you certainly can. She’s so brave!”

But when her fellow students have to choose partners, they still don’t choose her. Brave is one thing. The amount of work it would take to do the project with her is another.

When college is done they also don’t hire her in their companies. Brave is one thing. But every business needs networking and the human touch. She isn’t much good at interpersonal communication in this world.

Stacy wants to be a scientist and her research papers in graduate school were ground-breaking. But after she gets her degree, she can’t get a job in science. You have to meet people at conferences. And initial meetings are all about subtle telepathy. Stacy’s smile and outstretched hand ready to shake are clumsy and… well… just off.

A few of her professors, deeply impressed by her scientific work, make introductions. And that seems to work for awhile. Stacy gets a prestigious internship and finally an entry level job in her field. The sky seems like the limit and Stacy believes she can do it. She doesn’t mind that it is harder for her. She is focused on the positivity instilled in her by all those little stars she earned.

But staff reviews aren’t great even in the beginning and they go down hill. “She doesn’t greet colleagues… She is cold and aloof... She isn’t interested in working with others…” The same phrases come up a lot. Stacy remembers her special teacher and she goes out of her way to be helpful and kind to others. Some start to call her “cloying.”

She loses her job over misunderstandings and it has been a few years since she was in grad school. The old connections are lost and new ones come very hard, when she can’t do the networking circuit. She gets a few gigs doing science writing. They don’t pay much and slowly she becomes obsolete in the field. Failure stings.

She knows she was given all the opportunities, more in fact than others. She was given scholarships, special teachers and second chances. Her teachers were right. She just didn’t learn their lessens well enough.

She rents a place out of town, away from other people. It is easier if people aren’t around all the time. It takes so much energy to explain at every turn why she doesn’t do telepathy. It is exhausting to go through the social strategies she has learned to smooth it over. She turns to art made with natural materials that she gives to an old lady to sell at local fairs. This and her Social Security disability check makes a bare income.

Her art is beautiful and sometimes makes people go misty eyed. No one really points her out as an inspiration anymore though. Her smile has faded and she usually looks glum. She also talks to plants and her several cats.

Her brother and sister come to visit her with their families on occasion, but their spouses don’t really understand about her. They see her as eccentric, old before her time and not a very positive example for their children. They sit around her table as she stays mostly in the kitchen preparing food.

She loves the moment of attention and social connection she gets when she brings the food out. They’ll ooh and aah and make an effort to speak out loud for a moment. And that sends her scurrying back to make them more food. But no one thinks of her much beyond that.

One evening during such a visit, Stacy is tired from a long afternoon of cooking and she sits down at the side of the table, her fingers caressing the smooth wood of the old family dinner table. She half-listens to the conversation, the parts of it that are audible and she watches faces for the clues about what is going on under the surface.

Her sister-in-law’s face flickers and she breaks into a smile. Everyone all around the table laughs, except Stacy. She doesn’t know what the joke is as usual.

Usually, she just lets it go but sometimes she asks. And now the atmosphere seems relaxed enough, so she ventures timidly. They don’t hear her at first. The conversation is going on at the other end of the table, fast back and forth. When they do finally hear Stacy, it is jarring.

She’s interrupting. She has no sense for proper interjecting. She’s just so rude. That’s what most of them think. The way Stacy butts in shows how she isn’t even paying attention and then she wants them to pay attention to her.

Her sister who is closest to her in age does understand a bit. She knows Stacy tries and that she’s a lot more sensitive and kind than people think. She stops the raucous conversation and asks Stacy what she wanted. Stacy carefully explains.

They have to backtrack in the conversation. Her brother tries to explain the joke with words. It was a non-verbal thing though. It isn’t easy. His wife and his brother-in-law are clearly bored.

Stacy thanks them and smiles. Then she ventures to ask, “Could you speak out loud a bit more tonight.. I feel like I’ve hardly seen you this visit.”

The irritated sister-in-law turns to the others and projects the sentiment that Stacy is a bore and not very much fun. To Stacy she says, “Dear, you really should try some of these positive thinking affirmations. You know, if you could just be more like that famous actor who is mind-blind. You know. He is so gracious and such an inspiration.”

This isn’t the first time, Stacy has heard this. In fact, she’s heard this many thousands of times. And this isn’t the first exhausting conversation she has sat on the edge of while being thought to be pushy and demanding.

This probably isn’t the time when Stacy makes an outburst or cries or yells or demands to be treated like an equal. That only happens once in about a thousand similar situations. And Stacy feels guilty for those outbursts. She knows mind-blind people from her old special school for the disabled who never make a demand or an outburst. They sit quietly in their family home and make handicrafts. They make no demands. No one says they're an inspiration but neither do they blame them.

When her family goes back to their homes and leaves Stacy alone again, she is relieved. She doesn’t really like to be alone, but the truth is that it is easier than the constant struggle. And anything is preferable to those comments that tear her up inside.

Very few people in Stacy’s world ever think about a world like ours, a world where everyone is like Stacy. And if they do think it, it is just idle curiosity. What would it be like, if no one used telepathy, if all we had were five senses?

The truth is that Stacy’s world is not so far away. The sense Stacy lacks that everyone else has is no different from hearing or sight. It is one thing. She gets around without it just fine. She can do schoolwork, science, cook, be a full person in every way. She can be a great friend too. But because society is not made for people like her, her career fails and she ends up isolated.

I know dozens of Stacies all over the world. They just happen to be bright and competent and awesome and physically blind. And we live in the world we live in and most of human communication is visual. Blindness is the condition people subconsciously dread in our world. But they dread it for the wrong reasons. Physically not seeing things is a nuisance, for sure. But that’s not what leads to the isolation and despair.

Inclusion takes effort and the fact is that most people just don’t want to think too much about it.