During my son’s late baseball practice, I looked up at the lights, delighted to see bats busily hunting that night’s dinner. Bats lack the grace of birds in flight, their wings swatting at the air rather than smoothly beating in steady strokes, making their round, hairy bodies wobble. Flight for a mammal must be challenging, by the looks of the bat’s frantic flapping. The appearance matters not for the bat, but it gets the job done as it tracks its prey.

We tease loved ones when they fail to notice something by explaining, “You’re blind as a bat!” We focus on these tiny creatures’ poor eyesight rather than marvel at their existence. I blame humanity’s jealousy of all that flies without mechanical aid. Instead, shouldn’t we marvel at a friend’s uncanny ability to find seemingly lost items by saying, “You found that like a bat catching a bug midair during a new moon!” It doesn’t roll off the tongue, but it would show better respect for our hairy little winged friends.

The bat doesn’t care that its eyes don’t work as well as those of daytime hunters. It pays no heed to our scorn or how we laugh at its zigzagging course. It doesn’t need excellent eyesight because it trusts in its unique way of navigating. Bats emit ultrasound frequencies to use echolocation as they fly, squeaking at a pitch far above our human ability to hear. I wonder if one bat ever says to another, “You’re deaf as a human!” when its friend fails to snatch an insect.

What if we learned more from the bat than its marvelous targeting system and embraced its trust in its unique abilities? We laugh at others for not being like us and feel shame when we fail at being like everyone else. We assume that because we see well, the bat has a disadvantage. We feel embarrassed and attack ourselves when we lack an ability we believe is common among our peers. We compare ourselves to those around us in the most unflattering of ways.

But the bat keeps flying, not caring about our judgment of its blindness but soaring high above us, having capitalized on and embraced that which makes it unique. Imagine what you could accomplish if you pulled energy away from trying to obtain skills that belong to others and, instead, perfected those special to you! What if you trusted yourself, your instincts, and your unusual talents to navigate in those moments when you fear your own blindness?

We will likely find ourselves swatting at the air rather than soaring, our bodies wobbling instead of soaring. Looking around at others, we start to feel self-conscious that our way must be wrong because their way looks effortless and fluid. We fear doing it “wrong,” even when our singular produces more satisfying and fulfilling results. Terrified of being “weird,” we stop and struggle with the typical way at the expense of our authentic, distinctive selves.

We like to say, “We do weird really well” in our house. Trust yourself in your blindness. The “standard way” may not be your way. In fact, the method employed by others could be detrimental to you and your goals. Be a bat: zigzag happily on your own path, let your body wobble as your wings flap, and enjoy every single treasure you discover without giving a moment’s thought to the judgment of others. After all, they likely poke fun from the ground because they cannot soar.

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